House of R - Tropes Course: Magical Weapons, From Excalibur to the Darksaber

Episode Date: May 4, 2023

From swords to scabbards to hammers, and everything in between, it's time for Jo and Mal to dive deep into the trope of magical weapons and all they have to offer the stories we love. They examine the scope of the trope (06:04) and all of the great stories that come with them. Later they talk about the worthiness of those who use these magical weapons, forging and reforging, and so much more. Hosts: Mallory Rubin and Joanna Robinson Senior Producer: Steve Ahlman Social: Jomi Adeniran Additional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Sean Fennessey, one of the hosts of the Prestige TV podcast. HBO's Barry is back for a fourth and final season. And that means I'll be back recapping the show with co-creator and star Bill Hader to dive deep on the themes, scenes, and major moments in the series. Bill will provide insight into how every episode was made and why it's ending. New Prestige TV Barry recaps will go live every Sunday night when the episode ends. So make sure you're subscribed to the Prestige TV podcast wherever you get your podcasts. For adults with Crohn's Disease or Ulcerative. colitis symptoms, every choice matters.

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Trading derivatives involve significant risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Manage your activity with our consumer protection tool. Restrictions apply. See terms at Fandul.com slash predict slash bonus dash offer dash term. You don't vote for kings? Well, I'd become king then. The lady of the lake. Her arm clad in the purest shimmering Seymite

held a loft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. That is why I'm your king. Listen, strange women lying in ponds, distributed swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the man. from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony. Be quiet!

Oh but you can't expect to wield supreme executive power, just cause some watery tart threw a sword at you? Shut up! I mean, if I went round saying I was an emperor, just because some moistened bint had loved a cimitar at me, they put me away! Shut up, will you? Shut up! Ah! Now we see the violence inherent in the system!

Shut up! Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help, help! I'm being repressed! Reverse your nexus podcast feed for all things fandom. I'm Joanna Robinson and joining me today. It's the watery tart herself, Mallory Rubin. Supreme Executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical podcasting ceremony, Joanna?

That opening clip from Monty Python, the Holy Grail, is dedicated to King Charles on his Coronation Week. Hello, we are here to talk about magical weapons. We're so excited. This is our second installment of the Troops course. We're here to talk about not just blades, but your hammers, your daggers, perhaps a scythe. I don't know. It's all on the table, really.

A lightsaber. That counts. Before we get into all of that, and we are so excited. We're going to talk about some of our very favorite stories ever. Mallory and I are just, like, brimming with enthusiasm to talk about them. Just some quick programming reminders for you. keep your eyes out for another minty fresh mint edition episode

on Visions Star Wars Visions very exciting. Love our Mint Edition boys. Friday, the Midnight Boys, Poo Poo! We'll be here with their instant reaction Guardians of Galaxy Volume 3. Mallory and I will be here on Monday, House of our

deep dive into Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3. And then long look program reminder in three weeks. We're doing Doctor Who second round. This is David Tennant. The beginning of the David Tenant era, we were doing David Tenet,

10th Doctor and Martha, and David Tenet, the 10th Doctor, and Rose. Those are just like season two and three of the Russell T. Davies era. You got a couple weeks, three weeks to get into those. And I'm so excited. Mal, are you excited to get back into the world of Doctor Who? Too Who? Too furious.

I can't wait. I'm so excited. to continue our Huvian journey together. I'm really looking forward to it. It feels like it's been like a minute and a hundred years all at once. Like we never left the first pod and like I've had to wait my entire life to climb back into the TARDIS with you. I can't wait.

Okay. So we've got swords. We've got time lords. We've got guardians. There's a lot going on. Mallory, how do people keep track of all of that? So glad you asked. Thank you.

My first recommendation would be to follow the pod. Follow the pod on Spotify. Or wherever you get your podcast. And while you're at it, follow the ringerverse across the many social media platforms on which the ringerverse has a handle. We're everywhere. We're on Twitter. We're on Instagram. We're on TikTok.

While you're at it, you've listened to the pod. You've checked out the tweets. You've got some thoughts. You want to send them our way. How do you do it? Well, you send an email. The inbox is open. Hobbits and Dragons at gmail.com.

Send your Guardian's thoughts. Send your who thoughts. Send your thoughts on anything and everything. Keep the Apple thoughts coming. They're always welcome. Mallory, what did you say in response to a gif of a Granny Smith apple that I sent to you the other day? Compelling, I think is the word of you.

It wasn't about the apple, though. It was about the person eating it. The beautiful Natalie Dormer spokesperson for the Granny Smith apple. love to have Margie Trell on my side. Okay, spoiler warning for this episode is a little complicated. We're talking about a lot of different things, right? Stories. Swords.

Anything with a sword. Some biggies. Avatar the Last Year Vendor. All Arthurian legend, Sword and the Stone, One's a Future King, Harry Potter, all Star Wars, his dark materials, the MCU, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada. So that is what we were talking about today. I don't think we're going to spoil. we're drilling down on the

on the weapons. We're not here gleefully talking about any other sort of hot, hot button items. There might be a couple. A couple, yeah, this is how the story ends. But we'll try to flag that in real time. And most of those have been out for a really long time.

Oh, wow. You've had a minute. So here we are. Okay. I wanted to start, as we did last time, with the scope of the trope Love it. Of this particular trip that we're talking about today. Tell me, Joanna. I was inspired by the Midnight Boys, Poo-Pew, having a little just like pre-discussion about magical blades.

And they were like, is Long Claw, a Valerian steel sword? Is that a magical blade? Yes. Yes. Et cetera, et cetera. Yes. Great news. They are.

What is magical is going to be a. question on our mind this week, but like an important weapon. That is what we're here to talk about today. We have this really fun email from listener Scott that cracked both of us up, so I wanted to read it to you. Scott sent over this email and said, this quote from a character written by author, Daryl Gregory, on the way tropes are used in different ways in different genres. The character itself was a fictitious version of Philip K. Dick, but that's a longer story. Quote, readers will read something as science fiction if the characters are engaged in the process of science. In fantasy, there's no fiddling with the rules.

You pull a sword out of a stone and that makes you king of England. There's no, but what if I put a sword into the stone? In a science fiction novel, everybody would be trying to figure out how to make more kings by inserting more sharp objects into rocks. A fantasy novel is almost distinguished by not asking those fundamental questions. about what is going on. A science fiction novel, no matter what the rules,

is always asking those questions. End quote, and this is the kicker from Scott. Scott writes, so Mando season three would be a fantasy use of the trope while Valerian steel and dragonglass and Game with Thrones

is much more of a sci-fi use of the trope. I thought that was brilliant. Mallory and I both literally laughed out loud, so thank you so much. I'm just envisioning people shoving swords at the stones. Everybody would be trying to figure out how to make more kings

by inserting more sharp objects and the rocks slayed me. Incredible. We want to talk about the origin of the trope of magical weapons or like wide swords are so important and it's not just about sticking people with the pointy end, but there's a couple things involved here. It's also that. A lot of it is that. Going into like the history of sword smithing, once upon a time, it was not so easy with the tools that were available to make a sword, a well-balanced sword, any kind of sword. And so the existence of any kind of good sword was deemed almost miraculous and perhaps

magical in its own right. So swordsmiths like, how the hell did you do that, man? That's pure magic. And knights were called like the distinguishing feature of a knight versus like a squire versus a page versus a vassal, etc, etc. is that at once upon a time, Knights were the ones with swords. They had the swords. No one else did because swords were so scarce. So this idea of like a magical sword not only conferring, you know, conferring power and legitimacy to someone. You get your sword.

You are a knight. Now you are a leader of some kind of the people. Global history lesson Vikings prized their swords above all else, passed them down generationally and gave them names. That's going to come up a couple times in this episode. The Maori believe sores contained a spirit, aka Mana Samurai, believed that there was a soul inside the blade that could possess the bear. It was the blade that wanted to kill, not the wielder. Again, that's going to come up a few times in this discussion.

But I love that these ideas that permeate our favorite high fantasy are rooted so deeply in global cultural beliefs a stretch way, way back. Anything you want to say about any of this? Smiley Rubin? I think that to that last point about the connection between which you're about to explore in more detail between real world histories, cultures, customs, religions, storytelling traditions that evolve over time, the way that something like the Arthurian legend is revisited and updated in the context that is contemporary to the author spinning that particular version of the yarn is part of why this trope is at once kind of difficult to define,

per the Midnight Boys' Tees, but also a little bit of that like Supreme Court, you know it when you see it. Right. The definition, it's porn and magical sorts. Exactly. One and the same, you know. It permits so much of what we have grown up reading and consuming and enjoying. and enjoying and thinking about and sharing with each other.

And the trope has many different manifestations. And so there's like at once this great continuity. And the aspects of the different stories and different renderings feel like very of a piece, but is a given story about worthiness. Is it about the call? Is it about the connection? Is it about the sentience of the blade? The magic of the blade, the magic of the wielder?

Which informs the legend? Is it because they inform each other? Is there a rejection? Is there a sacrifice? On and on and on. What is the cost? Is there a curse? There are so many different slivers and some stories that we cherish cover almost all of those aspects.

Some of them really linger in one particular realm of magical bladedom. But the idea of the sanctioning that you mentioned, that legitimacy, I think if it were just that, it would be elective. to us as fans of stories because it is so inextricable from the idea of the call, from the hero's journey. She'll also talk about more in a minute. But I love that it's not just that, that there are so often some tragedy, some torment, some temptation. It isn't just, you were chosen because you're great, and that's a wrap.

Like, that's not that interesting of a story, right? And so even if it starts that way, there are so many different wines in the road, And we get to go on that arc with the character. We get to be a part of that journey. We get to take part in that adventure. And it feels like the blade is in our hand because of it. And that's just one of the reasons that I think this is such a favorite for both of us. I think very specifically, that was beautiful, Mallory, as always.

But I think very specifically stories that we are less interested in are, A, you're chosen. That's it. you're done or or B, that idea of might equals right. And when you're talking about a magical weapon, I think it's a little boring to us if the story is just like, who's the strongest or the fastest or whose blade is the sharpest. We love a magical weapon story where the weapon, the journey of the wielder and the journey of the weapon is tied to character growth, character setbacks, tests, etc.,

et cetera, corruption or growth of worthiness or whatever the case may be. So even though we're talking about something very physical, something that slices, something that pummels, something that, etc., etc., it's the internal aspect of these stories that peak our interest in those. Absolutely. We are going to talk about some of the stories that are most important to us, but we acknowledge that that is limited to, very much limited to, like, our upbringing, where we were brought up, how we were brought up.

And also, we do have some letters from listeners who are touching on some massive IP. Mallory and I try our best, but there's a lot out there. And there's some IP we have not hung with. So if people sent us a lot of emails about certain IP, we are going to include that. Shout out to the House of Our Heads, who came through in a big way with the emails. Do House of Our Heads have a name yet? Not that I've heard of. Folks, it's time.

Get on it. I think I'm too better than House of Our heads. So I challenge you. But yeah, we rounded up a bunch of like real world from like, by real world I mean from like global mythology examples. We're not going to go through them all because it's a very long list. But I came up with sort of three categories, which is like swords, bows are very popular globally. And then other, which covers your staffs, your tridents, your thunderbolts, etc. You know I'm a big Oliver Queen fan, so I love a bow.

Anything pop out to you in the in the sword category, Mallory, of these options? All of them? I mean, all of them. You like the Green Dragon Crescent Blade was it's, first of all, let me just say for a minute. This is, I think, like a genuine passion project, but also the level of research here. Extraordinary. Joanna put together a genuinely exhaustive list of real world. examples and it was so fun and interesting, just genuinely interesting to see the way that real

world history has informed so many of the stories that we tell. And that's like a very intuitive, almost like obvious thing to say, right? But the thing I love about it in particular, like if we start with swords and the number of different examples from different cultures that you pulled here, they are at once steeped in and deeply rooted in the specificity of that place, those people, of their customs. And yet there are these commonalities and similarities across the stories. And it made me think of, this isn't going to be the last time that one of us mentions little tale called A Song of Ice and Fire today.

But it made me think of something like the legend of Lightbringer and Azora High and how there's every different culture inside of a Song of Ice and Fire. has its version of this conquering prophetic hero. And when you read all of the descriptions, you're like, these are all connected to this one idea, but they are so rooted in the particulars of the people telling them. And so that really stood out reading through this. But yeah, Green Dragon Crescent Blade, which you brought to my attention here,

this idea of the blood of the fallen foes freezing onto the, blade and remaining there as a thickening layer. A frozen blood after drop of blood. Frost fair blade? A 10 out of 10, no notes. Remarkable. Incredible. Did you have a favorite that you either already knew about or that you learned about

in the process of your research? I learned about almost all of these. I was dazzled by how much I didn't know, right? But like, I wanted to shout out to one is Joyuz, which is Charlemagne's blade that has all these mythical stories about it, this idea that it came from part of the lance of Longinus, which was pierced Jesus Christ, if that's what you believe, turns many colors, but it is literally in the Louvre. So you can like go see this blade that has all these sort of mythological stories about it, but it exists in a case in a museum in France.

And I think that is incredibly cool. And then also one that came up, the sword that came up the most in all of the sort of research I did, was Kusanagi No Tsulugi, which is the grass-cutting sword, this Japanese sword of legend, control the wind, gather the clouds of heaven, cut the grass, slayed an eight-headed serpent, and it shows up in, if you're a Naruto fan, it shows up in Naruto, but it is like,

again and again and again comes up in mythology, and this idea. I love that it's called, the grass-cutting sword because, and like, names for swords are so incredible. Frost, fair blade, grass-cutting sword, so cool. This idea of a connection of the weapon to the earth, the specific topography of the legend is something we see again and again and again, and I just love that that is true here. Any magical bows stick out to you, Mallory Rubin.

Oh, well, other than Oliver Queens, which, you know, I already mentioned. I have to pat that water to build up the hand strength. We both love talking about mythology. And so Apollo is, of course, a fave. It's the, sometimes I do this thing on pods where I laugh as I'm about to say something deeply disturbing. It's like nervous laughter at a funeral. I don't know what's wrong with me. I apologize.

It's the giggle loop. Yeah. The plague. arrows. Very tough. Yeah. It's very tough. Apollo could just shoot out plague arrows at the war in Troy, just sort of like, and you get a plague and you get a plague.

Amazing stuff. Well, I love that. I love that contradiction because Apollo is like so closely associated with healers with a medical practice, etc., etc. And so like the fact that like his boat could heal but could also spread a plague if he needed to. And I think that will be another theme. that's part of why that one stood out in the bow category.

I think that would be another big theme today. The pull into the light, but the push to the dark, the multiple different sides of an object itself, but also because of that entwined nature of the wielder. And is the magical weapon leading you to that place? Is something inside of you in like Ebony Blade fashion, already there that it is calling a pun or are you the one corrupting it like a bled khyber crystal? So anything that allows us to look at that, again, it gets away from that kind of like neat, tidy.

This is just a purely good heroic thing that we already talked about. Like anything that is more complex and where there's real risk and temptation along that road is, I think, the most interesting. I want to shout out, it's either Gandiva or Gundava. you pronounce it, but it's the magical bow with a mythological hero Arjuna, and I just want to shout out our producer Arjuna, but hundreds of arrows could be shot miles away, and strings clap like thunder and lightning. And again, to your point about this idea of similarities across cultures, this idea of a bow where the strings clap like thunder and lightning crops up again and again and again.

So like, I just love, you know, the idea of a loud twang really sort of like made it worked its way into global mythology. Last but not least, anything in the other category that you want to shout out. Well, I never miss an opportunity to talk about our guy the Allfather. Odin himself, you know, the Baltimore accent really came out there. Hey, Odin, do you want to go down to the ocean and see a nose game on? You think Odin was a big baseball fan? Odin's spear, which of course MCU fans are familiar with.

It's not a central feature of the MCU canon, but it's always there, much like Odin's Ravens. And not only the role that Odin Speer plays in, like, relative fashion to Thor's Hammer, Milnear, which we will, of course, talk about at length shortly, the coveting. Like, you think of a way that a character like Loki looks at Odin's spear, lus after Loden Lodin's spear And then when a character

Like Loki Who we think of Associated with You know the signature daggers Ends up with And this is again In the MCU Universe

And continuity The Scepter The Mayan stone inside of it It's like Well I finally have a spear And things are about to go horribly horribly wrong A lot of spears

Yeah It's a big thing. And what is a spear without its pointed tip? It is a staff. And so I'm going to shout out Rui Jingu Bang that came a bunch. And this is the staff of the featured heavily in Journey to the West. This is the staff of the Monkey King. It can transform in size to the size of a needle to world spanning.

And again, I think that idea of like the scepter, the rod that like, symbol of a ruler and how it relates to staffs and spears, etc., etc. is very interesting to me. So, yeah, so many great ones. I mean, if we could talk about all of them, we'd be here all day. That's slightly appealing, but it's not what we're going to do to you today. We're not able to hit everything both in real world history and in stories, and that's okay, because it just means we can keep talking about it forever.

We'll have lots of opportunities in the future to return to magical blades, to revisit them in the context of a particular tale or, you know? The Troops courses is ongoing. School is in session, so. I think we're going to be thinking about some of the things we talk about today for ever. Dare I say, okay, so last one at least sort of in this preamble, I just want to say that Mal and I have, Mal is a light gamer and I am a pretty much no gamer, but we know that swords are very important in video games. So to represent all video game swords, I'm going to use this email from our listener, Caleb. He wrote,

If you're talking iconic magical blades and gaming, none are more iconic than the master sword from the Legend of Zelda series, known as the sword that seals the darkness. Since the blade first appeared in 1991's Link to the past, and despite being the chosen hero across many of the games, the many games, Link has to prove his worthiness to claim the blade, for example,

in the series' most recent entry, breath of the wild. The player has to build up Link's strength as if you and if you try and pull the sword from the pedestal without enough health, the blade will suck out all of Link's lifehorse and remain lodged in the ground. I think the thing that really makes the master sword stand out when you compare it to the other magical blaze of pop culture is that it's

our blade. The many different links that serve as the main protagonist of the series are the archetypical self-insert, a silent protagonist whose name is a literal pun on how he links the player to the game. While in something like The Last of Us, Joel and Ellie have their own driving motives, which may at times different from the player, Link isn't intentionally blank slate that we can project ourselves onto. And as a result, the Master Sword is our sword. We forged it, honed it, battled with it. We've wielded it through many stories crafted by Nintendo and those crafted by ourselves,

both in the sandbox of the game and beyond. It's wedged itself so deep into this nerds heart that I've got it mounted proudly on my wall. And Caleb sent a photo, and it was absolutely beautiful. This is Joanna again. I was just like, this actually got me very emotional. And I think one of the reasons why, not just because of our recent coverage of The Last of Us, but the book Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, which you and I just recently enjoyed within the last year, each of us read that book.

And the idea of the very personal connection that the player can have with the game and the way in which that game play can encourage growth inside the player. And that idea of ours, it's our sword. We made it. We honed it. I loved this email from Caleb. Anything you want to add, Mel?

I thought this was a beautiful email as well. And that idea of Link as the avatar in particular really like heightened that sense of why so many of us fall into fantasy stories in whatever form, games, books, shows, movies, comics, et cetera, et cetera, role-playing games in the first place because it allows you to take something about your life and contextualize it anew in a way that makes you understand something about your identity, your sense of self, your purpose, your goals, community you want to be a part of.

And what I love about the master sword, I mean, you already noted this, you emphasized when you were reading the email, but the sword that seals the darkness is just iconic. All of the alt names for the master sword, the blade of evil's being, just remarkable. But I love like, and I think this compounds that really rich connection between gamer and blade.

I love the way that the master sword and your relationship to it builds over time. It feels very emblematic of this other theme and through line that we're discussing. Because like, when did it's dangerous to go alone, take this, enter the public consciousness? When did that become an iconic phrase that now lingers? By the way, shout out to Jason, who has a tattoo of the Master Sword with that quote on it on his forearm. Amazing.

It's a great tattoo. The tracing back, the introduction to the 80s. And then the way that it manifests anew and your connection to it, builds. and builds and builds exponentially game release after game release after game release. And you can go back to that first moment and revisit that first experience. But every time that you need a new heart container or you're thinking about the energy pull is a new part of your journey and a new part of your experience and your connection too. So that's just awesome. Also, like, there's a spirit inside the master sword, right?

Fee. So that gets to that idea too of we'll talk a lot about sentience, the mind of the blade, but also this idea of the soul. inside of a magical weapon and when these magical weapons can think and feel and choose and how the bearer

melds their own choice with the choice of the blade. When are those things in conflict? When is their harmony? Master Sword is a great way into that. Very, very, very, very wonderful email from Caleb. I loved it.

And I just want to say to in Caleb's defense there was a whole section about Fee that I had to cut out. just because this pot is already so long. But Caleb did mention that part. And, yeah, the mind, the soul, the spirit, the, you know, all of the will of the blade of the weapon is so fascinating to me.

We do want to mention, like, the reason why we're doing this particular tropes course now, just like we did, lone wolf and cub peg to The Last of Us, the inspiration was the Dark Sabre from Mandalorian and various other animated Star Wars. properties. We are going to talk throughout. We're just going to talk throughout. We're just going to check in on how the Dark Sabre

hit or missed some of these potential moments as a storytelling device. It wasn't our favorite in Mando's season three, but I think it's worth thinking about... Still a favorite overall, though. The potential of it and maybe, you know, the potential future of it.

Also, I can't find the email right now, but we did have a listener who got, who recently got a sore tattoo on their form. and who asked for our help to name the sword. And I think what I'm going to do is put that photo with that listener's permission up on social media and sort of ask our listeners to weigh in because I'm sure that they could come up.

But like, high bar, fair frost blade, the sword that seals the darkness. Like, get really fun and creative with this, guys. I love it. So it wasn't Neil Druckman emailing about the tattoo he finally got of Ellie's switchblade? Not yet. And then also,

not just the Dark Saper. I was just trying to think of Guardians if there was anything. And of course, there's Yondu's Arrow, which plays a role in Guardians three. We're not going to talk super specifically about that because I think most of you have not had a chance to see it yet. But think about it when you see how Yandu's Arrow is used in that film. Think about some of the things we're talking about today.

I think there's some nice stuff in the prior films as well. Obviously, just like the visually scintillating sequences with the arrow. But there's the, you know, at the end of volume two, There's the great moment between Yandu and Peter. Peter having told Yandu that the only thing he could think did make with the celestial why it was a ball. And it builds toward Yandu saying, you know, you thought, you think when I make this arrow fly, I use my head. And then he eventually says, I don't use my head to fly the arrow boy. I use my heart. And again, it's like quite literally controlled by a fin that is embedded into his brain. So it is, of course, technically actually, actually. controlled by his brain, but I love the way that he reframes it. It's about feeling. It's about the intention in his gut and in his soul. And that's just a deeply compelling thing to hear from a character like Yandu, who we think of as this like gruff, rough, rough guy. And we warm to over the course of volume two so fully. I can't wait to talk about Guardians on Monday. I love the

Guardians franchise. I'm hyped. this was this was a big a big movie guardian's three i'm really excited to talk about that all right um something we love talking about in in the tropes course series and just in general is the hero's journey the uh joseph campbell christopher bogler idea of the various steps of the heroes journey um this is not the end all deal of how to think about stories but it is a sort of a convenient framework to to use to think about stories and after i sort of went through all of the various weapons that we're going to talk about today. I started reverse engineered back to the hero's journey to think about where those

specific weapons pop up in these stories that we're going to talk about. And there's a bunch of different options. I don't think it could show up at every step, but there's a bunch of different steps that it could show up. So the first one is step one, right at the beginning, the call to adventure. And this is most likely in the case where the hero is picking up their parents' weapons. something that's just been kicking around the old attic or in like a hermit's cottage,

maybe old Ben has it in a trunk somewhere under something, you know? Old Ben Kenobi. But I love, I was just thinking about, I'm not going to talk about it at length because it's not a broadly, broadly popular book series, but the Enchanted Forest Chronicles, which I love by Patricia Red,

there's a magical sword that's important throughout. And in the fourth book, someone walks out of the forest with it, and a young boy who's like 16 is like, what the heck is this? And he has to spend the book learning what the sword is. But it is the opening pages of the book. Someone brings him a sword from the forest. He lives literally on the edge of the enchanted forest, call to adventure, crossing the threshold, all that sort of stuff. But his mom gives him a sword and she's like, I'm not telling you anything about it. You got to

figure it out and you can only come home once you know why you have this sword. And that's just like such a cool. And we either read or already know about it because we've read the other books. And that is such a classic call to adventure tied to the blade. And the idea of your parents' blade or weapon, which crops up again and again and again, the idea that circles that that I love is this idea that the fight that your parents fought isn't over. And you now have to pick up the same weapon that either your parent used to temporarily defeat the threat before or that didn't get the job done.

And maybe you can pick up the mantle, pick up the call to adventure, and get it done this time. We love an inherited mantle here at House of Ar. We do. And I just love the idea that because I first started thinking about this idea when I was watching the TV show Justified, I always think about the Elton John's song, My Father's Gun. I don't want to gender this and I don't really necessarily want to talk about guns. But, like, that idea of my father's gun is something that I think about all the time. Just picking up your parents' weapon and what will you do with it. That is the same or that is different.

How do you live up to their legend? How do you forge a legend of your own, et cetera, et cetera. Right. And sometimes we get to see that. We get to see many versions of those questions explored through the same, not only in the same story, but through the same character. So if we think of like Luke inheriting Anakin's

lightsaber and then later Ray this is not a story you heard this before inheriting Anakin's lightsaber there is an amazingly rich connection for both of those

characters because of that that blade is a conduit to thinking about the past to thinking about what it means to explore the force to be a Jedi but what do both of those characters do eventually. They forge their own blade, and they have to because they can't just carry somebody else's. They couldn't fully realize they couldn't reach the apotheosis stage, ultimately,

if they were doing it with somebody else's. Khyber crystal, which we'll talk about a lot later, and the call and the connection between them. So I love that. I love that part of it. Blades. We're to jump ahead to step five, crossing the thresholds. So like when the hero first understands the magical world that they've been living on the border of all along that's been here all along. That's the perfect time to pick up a magical weapon, right? You didn't even know the world was magical. Now you do, and here's a magical weapon to go along with it. Any thoughts or feelings about the crossing a threshold moment? You know, you already got your letter, but you still got to go into diagonal E, Joe.

Get your wand. You got to feel that warmth in your fingertips. And I think that ties in really neatly to the very next step, which is step six, which is test allies and enemies. And I love the idea of a magical blade going here. Because right after you step across that threshold, you might discover a new weapon that could be an ally. Or it may be the test, or it may even be the enemy. But I love that idea.

You know, you already mentioned this in the idea of Link and Zelda's, the master's sword, this idea of the spirit of the sword. So thinking of a sword as an ally, as a friend. friend, you know, usually in the story here, you're, you know, you're picking up your Weasley's or your Granger's or whatever, but like thinking, thinking of that weapon as something that you need a friend, a warm source of support for you as you counter something terrified. I love this idea.

Anything else you want to add to that? Again, I'm struck by how inside of the same fictional universe, we can have a recurring patterns at multiple stages. So I'll just stick with Star Wars. A handy example always, Luke, maybe if you polled a thousand

sci-fi and fantasy fans and said, who do you associate most with the call to adventure? I don't know, would like 70% of them say Luke first? Probably, right? So we think of Star Wars

and the nature of our origin story with Star Wars as inextricable from the call to adventure. But as Star Wars expanded, and as we got to, as more creators got to forge not just magical blades, but Star Wars stories, the step changed. We're going to talk later about the idea of the gathering. When younglings are going to Illam in the Clone Wars to find their, chiber crystals, they have been at the Jedi Temple since they were babies. The call came long ago. That's the road of trials, right? And so both of those are so central to how we think about the hero's journey inside of Star Wars. And I just love that neither is right or wrong. They're both

true. Correct. Which brings us to our last one, which is step nine, the reward or the boon. And this is, this is rarer. But, but, but. happens often in like franchises where we're just like the hero's journey is just the first part and then we're going to go on to do more where the magical weapon is the reward for the completion of the ordeal the mark of the hero's new status as truly heroic or as a leader that is again it's less interesting narratively if that's just the only story and here you get at the end of the journey here's the magical blade for you but if you've got if we have more chapters to come And then we think about how hard won that weapon was in the first place and how it almost like levels up our hero for the next challenge.

That that can be an interesting way to use it. What do you have to say about that? I don't know why this was the thing that popped into my head when you were saying that. Because there are, you know, a number of different and interesting examples that we could talk about. But I was thinking of the Cats Ballade and the way that that comes to. Yeah. Same thing. Yes.

elite and of course is rejected by, I'm sorry to mention them to you, Joe. I know it pains you every time I do. It's a brand. But that blade has been there from the very beginning. And so I love thinking about both aspects of that. Like how many different hands the cat's paw blade touched, how many different moments, central seismic moments in the song of ice and fire, it was involved with or connected to? Now we have a whole new way of thinking. about that because of House of the Dragon and everything that we've learned about

Agon's prophecy in that new show, right? But it's not just that the Catspaw blade makes its way eventually to Aria in this deeply consequential moment. This is one of the times where we're talking about the end of a story. I didn't mourn you at the beginning, but I'm warning you midway, which I'm sure is just as helpful.

It's also that it's the millionth consequential thing, Aria has held in her hand, right? So they've both had long journeys. And like, I'm, you know, I don't know when today we'll talk about needle. Maybe we'll just do it here, actually. But I love, I love thinking about needle inside of an examination of magical blades inside of a story like a song of ice and fire where we have Valerian Steel. We have dragon glass. We have a sword like Dawn. We have the idea of the prophecy around Lightbringer, all of which we're going to talk about more later today, needle is not in that way magical.

Castle forged steel. Castle forged steel. It was like one of my favorite things in covering, like, you know, you and I both covered throats for so long. And there's just like the question that crops up again and again and again and the misapprehend, like the mistaken thought that needle was Valerian steel was so common because it is such a consequential important blade and readers were trained to think

Valerian steel. Right. But, Mallory, what is inherently magical about this play that has nothing to do with the steel itself? That is the magic of it, is that it isn't magical.

It's magical because of what it represents for the characters, right? It's magical because it was John's gift to Aria and he understood something about who she was that other people didn't. Right? It's magical because that idea for the joke from the top of the pot,

sticking with the pointy end, which is genuinely consequential over the course of the story for both of those characters is a beautiful shorthand exchange between a brother and sister to outsiders inside of their own home who found peace and belonging together. It's magical because it represents Ned's blessing, right? Him, that, that's not me, Aria idea that is so central. And Ned's saying, then go be who you are. And it's magical. then because go be who you are leads aria to Serio, right? It leads to that like boy, girl, you are a sword, that is all. And then I think like my one of, I was trying to think, what is my single favorite idea connected to any of the swords? And it was, I mean, it couldn't do it.

It'll shock you here. Couldn't do it. I've got like a, my, my top five is 50 long. But in the process of prepping for the pod and thinking about all the things I was excited to talk about with you today. I kept thinking about Serio and Aria. And again, it's there, I mean, we're training for needle, but we're holding wooden training swords at this point. The steel must be part of your arm. Can you drop part of your arm?

It sums up everything, right? It sums up that connection, that sense of purpose, that sense of self, unlocking something about your identity and your quest, who you want to be, and then finding the people who will help you. Like, I just think that's, I just think that's beautiful. And I think that it is absolutely gorgeous. I love this idea.

Again, this idea of what is magical about a weapon and how flexible that definition is. And I think also when we think about ARIA, this is a perfect step 9, the reward or boon example. Because when Thrones, for all of its flaws, when Thrones, the show wrapped up, we're still waiting, George, for how you wrap up the books. But when the show drops it up, we believe. We see the stark kids in their various pieces of iconography. My favorite is like Sonsa and the dress, and I could talk about that forever. But Aria, off to find out what's West of Westeros, has the cat's paw on her hip. And so that is a perfect example of like, okay, chapter one, we did this.

But in the ongoing unfolding coming to HBO Max in 2035 adventures of Aria, the cat's paw will be there. and it will have this added burden of meaning. This episode is brought to you by WeatherTech. Everyone knows winter is the MVP and making a mess. You don't need WeatherTech floor liners in the summer, unless you hit the beach or go camping. Then you'd want a cargo liner. Or a road trip goes sideways, ketchup goes rogue, ice cream drips.

Yeah, you'd be pretty happy about those weather tech seat protectors. So just to be clear as the mud, you're inevitably going to step into the summer. you don't need weather tech unless you plan on doing summer. Visit weathertech.com today. Let's talk about the worthiness of the blade, both like immediate and as a symbol of growth. We were going to start with the MCU.

Have you ever heard of it? Someone wrote an email to trial by content this week and they said, Mallory voice. Abby out of Atlanta. I was like, suck it, Walrick. It's Mallory's quote now. Shit, Waldrick. So, the MCM.

We're here to talk about Yulnir. Mew. Not a blade. A hammer. How space. But I want to talk about how it both does and does not determine worthiness in endgame. And then Mallor's going to take us back a little earlier in the franchise. But endgame, which everyone agrees is better than Infinity War, is a really important moment to talk about.

Two wonderful films. To talk about Neil and you're, I want to start with this conversation that Thor has with Freya in Endgame. Yes. Which makes me, like, sob. Same. Same.

I watch it. Steve, our beloved, will you please play this clip for us? I was just dining now. An idiot with an axe. An idiot now. A failure? Absolutely.

It's a little bit of all. Would you know what that makes you? Just like everyone else. I'm not supposed to be like everyone else, I'm not? Everyone fails at who they're supposed to be for. The measure of a person of a hero is how well they succeed at being who they are. Come on, we gotta go. Three, two.

No, wait. What am I looking at? Oh, sometimes it takes a second. I'm so worthy. Chris Hemsworth has done many fine things in his life, but that is my favorite thing that Thor has ever done. Neil Neer, of course, was shattered, and...

Families can be tough. Thor feeling like he's a failure, even though he forged a new weapon for himself, Thor feeling that he's a failure, that he's not the hero that he was supposed to. to be that he was never worthy of the hammer in the first place. Freya giving him this conversation, him then calling Milnear from, you know, time travel is also tricky, from elsewhere in the timeline, this idea of the hammer as the symbol of worthiness for him,

but that he is inherently worthy even when his hammer was broken. And that is something that Freya is trying to explain to him, that the hammer, that you have to worthy yes to wield the hammer, but the hammer itself does not make you worthy. And that ties into the next moment from Endgame I want to talk about, which is in the final battle against Thanos ever heard of him. Because of the work the many films have done to connect Milneur to this sense of worthiness, because of that party scene in the age of Ultron where everyone tries to pick up the hammer and cannot, and maybe does Steve budget a centimeter?

or so maybe. Let's listen to the endgame opening night crowd go absolutely ape shit as Steve picks up the hammer. Our Steve, will you play this please? That's like the short version of it. But it, what I watched that clip a bunch of times and what's really fun about the screams is that they, is that they crest twice. The first one is when the hammer moves in the first place. And then it gets, and then this guy, this guy in the crowd goes, Captain, but you don't know

yet that it's Steve, right? But he goes, Captain. and then when it smacks into Steve's hand, then the crowd just goes even wilder because this is the payoff for Multron. It is, you know, and then Thoracost goes, I knew it, right? But it's like, it's what we knew

that Steve is also, of course, worthy. And then, of course, you know, Yonner's not the only weapon. There's myriad weapons in the MCU that we could talk about. But since we're here talking about Cap anyway, I should say that like Cap Shield also has some ideas of worthiness around it. Explored, I think like rather shake,

in Falcon and the Winter Soldier, but is still very interesting. And of course, it's always very, very special to me that Steve, my beloved Steve Rogers, that his weapon is a shield. I love you, Steve. Come back to us. Saying out on the moon. Come back, Steve. But you know what I mean?

It's like that, again, you don't, the hammer doesn't make you worthy, but that you need to be worthy. And we will see this again and again and again is this idea of worthiness of the weapon. Are you the one who can wield it? What about like earlier in the franchise, Mallory? I think I could and maybe one day we will do a whole pod just on Mielnir. There's so much to talk about here. Before I zip back to the beginning, I'll say on the cap front, difficult to think of many things that top it as a moviegoing experience.

It's truly incredible. And I think like the genius of it is that it's an all-time moment, right? But like part of the reason that it feels like such an all-time thrill is because we, we, we, believe truly and deeply in our bones that Cap could have called Mule Nier to him at any point and chose not to. Like, the restraint is part of what makes him worthy. He's not coveting it. He's not lusting after that power, and that is a distinguishing element between a character like Steve Rogers and so many others who would yearn for it. Oh, Cap. Okay, Muleer. I think that each movie. The Thor franchise is a very uneven one, some high highs and some lollos. But every

installment examines this question of worthiness and builds on it in, I think, an interesting way. And of course, this also is like an ever-present aspect in the Thor comics canon. We talked a lot during our Love and Thunder pod about the Jason Aaron God Butcher run, which obviously was very relevant to that film given Gore centrality, but it's just one of the best comic runs in general. And there's a lot of, like, if you're interested in picking up, okay, I'm interested in learning about the comics history of Muleyre, where can I start? There's just like a great reset here of the Muleer canon that I think is really lovely but also helpful. Forged by dwarves from mystic Uru metal and fires that would melt the sun, laden with enchantments by the Allfather himself, able to shatter whole planets as easy as, easy as pebbles. It is the most powerful weapon in all the nine realms, but only the worthy may lift it. Like, it is the most powerful weapon in all the nine realms. This is no joke. This isn't just a party trick. And so when we go to the first Thor film and we think about Thor's arc across the MCU and where he was when we met him,

the bravado, the misguided, brash entitlement, and that banishment, Odin's banishment, right? One of the few times our guy Odin is awake in the entire MCU. Testing Thor so that he can gain that new perspective. And I love the idea,

you know, we associate Mileneer with Thor maybe as fully as we do any magical weapon with any character. And it's like a birthright if you were a god of Asgard to have some sort of magical, mighty weapon at your disposal. And so in the first Thor film,

like that idea that he has to go earn it rather than it being gifted to him is just so crucial to who that character is and who he becomes. And the fact that Odin sends it to the same place that he sends Thor

is just like an all-time, fucked up taunt, but also it's an opportunity. Like, it's a life raft. And it is just literally Excalibur in the MCU. It's embedded in the rock,

and all of the talents people come and try to lift it. And they can't. And even Thor can't when he makes his way back to it at first, right? He has to learn humility and selflessness. And what it means to be a good king, and part of why I love Thor's art. across the Infinity saga so much is because for him, ultimately, ultimately that means deciding that he doesn't want to be king.

Joe? I don't want it. Wait, Steve? I don't want it. I don't want it. That'll come up again today, for sure. Those are my thoughts on the first Thor. Anything on the first Thor that you want to add?

I'm going to skip Dark World out of an abundance of generosity, but I will hit Ragnarok next. Let's go to Ragnarok. You already mentioned the shattering of Milnear and this identity crisis that it sparks for Thor, which is a source of a lot of great comedy in the film. You know, the Hammer pulled you off, et cetera. Wonderful movie. But building toward that beautiful conversation that we heard between Thor and his mother,

I don't think we can get a moment like that in Endgame if we haven't had a moment, like the one in Ragnarok, where, after. Losing his father after losing his hammer, this is the real, like, kind of crucial beginning and, and, and, and, and, continuation of this descent of loss that is so prominent in, in this heartfelt scene between Rocket and Thor and Infinity War, where Thor hears, he's hopeless, right?

Are you, Thor, the god of hammers, is what Odin says to him. That hammer was to help you control your power to focus it. It was never the source of your strength. And that is just such a key idea, not only for Thor, not only for Milneur, but across so many of these tails, like, is that blade, is the hammer?

The actual source of the power will, like, yes, right? Milnear is mighty and magical and can do all sorts of things that we could talk about for two hours if we had more time. But Thor has that ability inside of himself. there's an exponential boon when bearer

and blade or god and hammer come together in that way I love that Odin moment so much and that takes us to it's so good and like it takes us into Infinity War more loss right

almost as good as end game yeah yeah yeah two wonderful films Infinity Wars better too both both in top four yeah one of the more interesting, like how do we reconcile thing X with thing, Y examples in the MCU is taking a character moment that's that meaningful,

are you the god of hammers? And then going into Infinity War, where Thor is like, I need another magical weapon, right? He's had this huge breakthrough and then he's got ahead to Native Valier. Doesn't think that he can beat Thanos without it. And part of what makes Infinity War such a magical movie, is that when Thor and Rocket

are talking and Thor is weeping as he recounts the losses that have broken him both of those things feel true right I think that E. Trees he needs the axe

is like pretty rough you know, not the F.C.'s best not the FAC's best moment but like there's a truth to it Right? Stormbreaker, which Thor has made himself, has forged with his own hands, again, not just gifted to it. We're going to talk about that foraging of the blade. Very important. Yeah.

Absolutely. And like, it's restoring the lightning and the life, but it's the product of the place he is in that specific moment. Grut reaches out and extends his branches to make the handles because he's there. and Thor's with the Guardians in the first place because of Thanos' destruction of Thor's ship. So the way that it builds the relationship to the blade, and then, of course, there's a lot in love and thunder that we'll talk about in kind of a different category today. But the way that we understand Thor is often through his relationship

to Milnear or to Stormbreaker or to the characters who he's talking with about what they mean to him in a given moment. And it really is one of my favorite things in the MCU. Absolutely. I can see your mule near over your shoulder on the top of your bookcase behind you. Yeah. Right next to your night owl helmet. But I think that like I think no, there's no better example in the MCU.

Capshield comes close, but there's no better example. And like, I'm looking forward to Lake Shung Chi in the Ten Rings and how that like continues to develop as like another version of that. But again, that's your pick up your father's weapon. and what do you do with it sort of thing. We want much more of that story before we can really dig into it, but that's a good beginning. Let's talk about the call of the blade.

I love the call of the blade. This is another, we love chosen ones here, some of us more than others, and this is another way in which a chosen one gets chosen. I want to read a passage from one of the most important books of my life, which is Alana by Tamara Pierce. And this is, again, maybe not as widely familiar to people as the MCU, but this is like the er example to me of a blade, a magical blade calling a hero to action. I mean, we'll talk about Excalibur in a minute, obviously, but, you know, okay.

So it goes like this. And Alana, we should say, the story of Alana told over four books, she's a young woman who wants to be a knight. She disguises herself as a boy. So we'll meet Alana here. there's one of her mentors is with her Miles, he still thinks she's a boy. Okay, so she felt the magic uncurl inside her. Something else uncurled in the tunnel, but she ignored it. Her hand was glowing with bright, violet shine. She could feel a strangeness around her. No, two strangenesses. One frightened her. It was black and ghostlike, hovering just outside the light shed by her magic. The other called her with a high, singing voice she couldn't have ignored even if she wanted to. The singing filled her mind, drowning out Miles's voice. Her light struck something that broke it into a hundred bright fragments. She didn't notice the darkness closing in behind her as she picked up something that

glittered beautifully. It was a crystal attached to the hilt of a sword. Long and light, the blade was encased in a battered dark sheath. Alana's hand trembled. as she lifted it. Suddenly, the light of Alana's magic went out completely. Darkness swirled around her in long tentacles that tightened on her body. She opened her mouth to scream for miles and no sound emerged. She fought to breathe and fought to throw her magic into the stifling blackness, but nothing happened. It was squeezing her ribs, forcing the air from her lungs. Alana gassed for breath. The darkness filled her mouth and nose. Blent lights burst in her head.

Her struggles got weaker and weaker. She was dying, and she knew it. For the first time, in her life, Alana stopped fighting. She had used up all her air, all her strength, all her magic. She was weaponless. With an inner sigh, almost one of relief, she accepted that fact. As her knees buckled, Alana took the knowledge of her own death and made it part of her. The crystal on the sword blazed its light penetrating the darkness in her brain.

Suddenly, the fearful grip on her body and mind relaxed, she drew in a lung full of air, shocked to find that she still could. Alana used the crystal's light to guide her back to the entrance of the tunnel, feeling the blackness in full retreat before her. I know there's another section that I won't read that's much shorter, but there's so much in here that ties into repeated stories that we like to talk about. First of all, the Blade literally calls her. The high singing voice is the Blade calling to her. That idea of a blade singing through the air is something you see again and again in fantasy stories. It's one of my favorite word choices to use for how a blade slices through the air.

It sings through the air. The other is a theme that I've heard you talk about a lot, Mallory, that is really interesting to me, this idea of like a hero accepting their own death. Yes. Giving something up and that being an important transformative moment for them. So the reason that the sword fully, like it calls to her because of who she is to begin with in this section. But it belongs to her because of that choice she makes as this dark magic is sort of suffocating her. Getting a chill.

To give up control, you know, we can talk about her. we can talk about a number of people who've done this, but to give up something and then gain the weapon and the protection of the light against the darkness as her reward. Oh, my God. I just got like a full spine tingle listening to that just now. This is, as some people know from prior pods and heartfelt social media posts, this is one of the stories that Joanna gifted me at the end of the year for a holiday gift in our first full year as podcast partners together. And I can't wait to explore it and share it with you.

Seems amazing. Truly beautiful. That idea of the sacrifice and the surrender, I just love. I just love. Like it's such a, it makes me really emotional. I mean, there's like, I think there's a reason that the forest again is still, you know, my favorite Harry moment and the strength that it takes and what it says. And again, there's like, when are you coveting power for the sake of it and who can actually be trusted with power. It's often the people who are willing to forego it completely to protect other people.

And that gets back to that cap shield idea that you were talking about earlier too. We think of swords and shields as contrast, but they don't always have to be, right? A lightsaber deflects blasterbolts just as well as it cuts through a foe, you know? This idea also for this hero specifically for Alana,

and this is the beginning of her event So I don't think I'm spoiling anything to say like her stubbornness is a huge important part of her and is a part of what makes her a hero. The fact that she is smaller and slighter than all the other boys that she's training with is something she overcomes by taking one of her guardians like massive broad swords and training with it like so that she can build up the muscle that she needs. All the other boys are training with training swords and she's training with this massive sword so that she can be on their level, et cetera, et cetera. So that stubbornness is an asset, but there are moments for it and there are moments to let go. And the fact that this is tied so quickly to her getting this blade. Last passage from Alana I'm going to read comes shortly after. This starts with my, it starts with Alana.

Aren't you going to draw the blade? She asked. No, I'm not. You are. Miles held the sword out to her. I can't, she protested. They're your ruins. It belongs to you.

Miles shook and said, you have. haven't been paying attention. I was compelled to bring you here. You opened the passage when I tried to do it for years and failed. Something happened down there and the sword protected you. And don't forget the storm. I can take a hint, Alan. It belongs to you, she protested, almost tearfully. It never belonged to me. He thrust it at her. Let's see what she looks like, lad. Reluctantly, Alana stood and took the sword. The hilt fit her hand as if made for her. She closed her eyes and drew the sword. Nothing happened.

She glanced at Miles embarrassed. Her friend was gritting at her. I feel silly, she admitted. After what happened this morning, I was expecting something dramatic myself, he said. Well, Alana hefted the blade. It was thinner than a broadsword and lighter with a broadsword's double edge. The metal was lightweight with a silver sheen. She lightly touched a thumb to one edge and cut herself.

Grinning with delight, she tried a few passes. It felt wonderful in her hand. What will you call her, Miles asked. She didn't question Miles calling the blade a her. Seeing how it brought such a reaction from whatever regards to ruins, the night suggested, I guess that was it. Anyway, seeing how it brought on a storm and all so fast, how about lightning?

Miles raised his mug in a toast to Allen and Lightning. May you never meet a better blade. And again, this is like, I'm sorry, I'm getting tearful about this. I love this story so much. But again, this is about an ally, a friend made for you. Hilt fits your blade. And like the fact that she slices her thumb up and it makes her grin with delight. That it is a light sword for like a light young woman.

Like it is just like it's so beautiful. I love this story so much. And again, it is a perfect example for just a very, very, very inherent. basic steps of this trope. And then with just like absolutely beautiful language to adorn and flourishing, stuff like that. Boy, that was great. I love that. And that idea of friendship, you know, I think like when we think about certainly a night,

but in general or often when we think about the hero's journey or a quest, there are magical advisors and goddesses and friends. and hopefully found family along the way that's part of why we love these stories. But there are so many moments that feel deeply, deeply solitary. And the burden is one that that character has to shoulder alone. And so the idea that they're not alone, that they have that companionship in the form of the thing in their hand. It's just beautiful. Let's go from something that was foundational to me to something that was foundational to you

and foundational two, a gazillion people around the world. And that is one Mr. Harry Potter. This idea of the blade choosing, the wand chooses the wand chooses the wizard. That is the truth of it. Let's talk about Harry getting his wand from Mr. Oliver in the shop, right? Yeah. Mr. Oliver touched the lightning scar on Harry's forehead with a long white finger. I'm so sorry to say, I sold the wand that did.

did it, he said softly. 13 and a half inches, you, powerful wand, very powerful. And in the wrong hands, well, if I'd known what that wand was going out into the world to do. Boy. So this idea of twin wands, twin cores, this idea of two wands made of the same substance, but what will the wielder do with it? Mallory, what do you want to say about this? I mean, there's a lot.

You know, we'll save, all of the elder wand stuff will hit in a later. section. Yes. Well, we'll put a pin in the Elder Wand for now. But this idea of the wand choosing the wizard, which I think has become, you know, for readers of a certain generation, like shorthand for talking about how the trope manifests in different stories, like I think we both, and I know a lot of our other pals who watch Clone Wars when we're at the gathering, we're like, they went to Olivanders,

right? the way that Harry goes through wand after wand and it is a fit and then the warmth in his fingertips when he holds his holly wand at last with fox's tail feather inside there are a few different things that that are crucial here for the manifestation of the trope like one of them is this idea that it's another another sorcerer stone passage no to olivander wand are the same, just as no two unicorns, dragons, or phoenixes are quite the same. And of course, you will never get such good results with another wizard's wand. You know, when we think of the wand choosing the wizard, we think about Harry, because that's our introduction to the idea

inside of the story. But that never gets such good results idea always makes me think of like Neville. And Neville entering Hogwarts with this hand-me-down wand. And the way that's the way that that it not only was never going to work as well for him as a wand that had chosen him, but the pressure. That's that inheriting your parent, right? This is his father. His father, a famous, fabled wizard. And the burden of like not ever feeling like he could live up to that.

And the way that he begins to discover his confidence as a wizard, after that wand is completely destroyed. And he gets his own. is just really, really cool. The wand choosing the wizard idea comes up in bookend fashion

between Harry and Olivander in Deathly Hallows and it also really, you know, obviously choosing, it conveys the sense of like sentience but also a bond.

Yeah. I'll read a passage. This is Harry speaking. You talk about wands like they've got feelings, said Harry, like they can think for themselves. The wand chooses the wizard.

olivander, that much has always been clear to those of us who have studied wand lore. A person could still use a wand that hasn't chosen them, though, asked Harry. Oh yes. If you were any wizard at all, you will be able to channel your magic through almost any instrument. The best results, however, must always come where there's the strongest affinity between wizard and wand. These connections are complex, an initial attraction, and then a mutual quest for experience. the wand learning from the wizard, the wizard from the wand. Now, when that conversation is taking place, Harry is on the part of his quest that connects to learning more about the elder wand,

which again, we'll talk about later. But it's impossible to not think about the connection that Harry has with his own wand. And then you mention the twin cores, right? And this idea of the link, not only the link between Harry and Voldemort because they have brother wands, but whose tail feathers in their wands? Foxes, right? So that connects them to Fox. That connects them because of Fox to Dumbledore.

And this question of whether a wand, whether a twin core will duel its own brother is one of the ways that we get into something we'll talk about later with the elder wand, which is when do the characters in the story who have a connection to a magical blade seek a new level of understanding? When do they ask questions or when do they ask questions? or when do they make assumptions? And this is always a distinguishing factor between Harry and Voldemort,

most centrally with the elder wand, as we'll discuss. But with their own wands, this is a part of the story too. At the end of Goblet of Fire, when they're debriefing on what has happened in the graveyard, Sirius asks, so what happens when a wand meets its brother?

And Dumbledore says they will not work properly against each other. If, however, the owners of the wands force the wants to do battle, a very rare effect will take place. When eventually Voldemort realizes that, where does that lead him to taking Lucius Malfoy's wand, to pursuing the elder wand,

it's part of the ongoing eternal perpetual descent, the greed, the lust for power and for something that is superior. When we get back to the shield idea, what does Harry always use his wand for? Expelli Amunds. Disarming or? Protected.

I'm protecting. Right. I'm sorry. I just said like, I had a little Hermione moment. I'm like, I can answer this, Valerie. All right. I know you were going to say it. I just, sorry.

Okay. Let us talk then. Let us move now to Arthur and Excalibur, which is the, you know, the sword that Van said on Midnight Boys that he would most want. This is the magical sword. Yeah. It's the one, right? There's a million different. versions of the Arthurian legend told over centuries, literal centuries. But we're going to

pull a couple of instances from some of the more famous ones. And should be clear, Excalibur, Arthur and Excalibur, and all of that has historical, there's historical reference around this, right? This was a real sword caliber. And there's like a million different Welsh translations of this word, etc., etc. The way in which... You as a daughter of Wales can, I assume, translate them all directly? I can. They all have, like, nine Ls in them, and I love them.

But this idea that, like, Arthur and the sword and his sword grew and grew and grew and myth and legend to contain these magical properties, which then, again, are the er text of so many of our Western stories. let us talk about Excalibur comes, depending on the story you're telling, either from a stone, the sword and the stone, or from the lady in the lake, which you heard about at the beginning. Right. From this podcast from the Monty Python voice. Or the stone and then the lake.

Yeah. Or the stone and then the lake. So sometimes it's the same sword. Sometimes it's two different swords. It really depends what story you're reading here. But that's kind of key. So the passage in the once and future king by T.H. which was made into...

This is my dream. You're reading me The Once in Future King on a pod. This is central. Central canon in my life. Which was turned into the Disney The Sword of the Stone who's seen that, a lot of that.

And like, you will remember that in... If you've seen it. Not everyone has. It's not like a super popular Disney anime. That's my origin story with the trope. I love it. I love it. I didn't ask you that earlier.

I'm so sorry. But like, yeah, I mean, but what's so fun about... So watch that constantly when I was a kid. Well, it's so fun about the Once a Future King and the Disney adaptation. Like, why it's so kid-friendly is that Arthur Wart's training involves Merlin teaching him all these lessons via these animal-based adventures, right? He's turned it all these different adventures and he learns various lessons along the way. Arthur's son of Uther Pen Dragon legitimate, you know, air to the front, et cetera, et cetera,

but is raised his award by, you know, some other people and very, very Harry Potter under the stairs, very John Snow, like, treated poorly until he is the king here, right? Okay, so let's talk about pulling the sword from the stone. Here I am reading you some T.H. White, Mallory, I love you. Okay. In the middle of the square, there was. was a heavy stone with an anvil on it, and a fine new sword was stuck through the anvil. Come sword, Ward said. I must cry your mercy and take you for a better cause. This is extraordinary, said Ward. I feel strange when I have hold of this sword, and I notice

everything much more clearly. Look at the beautiful gargoyles of the church, how clean the snow is. I can smell something like Featherfew and Sweet Briar, and is it music that I hear? It was music. Weather of panpipes were for quarters and the light in the churchyard was so clear without being dazzling

that one could have picked a pin out 20 yards away. The music was loud and the light beautiful. I must take this sword is not for me but for K, I will bring it back.

He saw the golden letters which he did not read and the jewels on the pommel flashing in the lovely light. Come sword, said the wart. He took hold of the handles with both hands rained against the stone.

There was a melodious concert on the recorders, but nothing moved. The wart let go of the handles when they were beginning to bite into the palm of his hands and stepped back seeing stars. He took hold of it again, pulled with all of his might. The music played more strongly in the light all about the churchyard glowed like amethyst, but the sword still stuck. Oh, Merlin, cried the wart, help me to get this weapon. There was a kind of rushing noise and a long chord played along with it,

All around the churchyard, there were hundreds of old friends. There were badgers and nightingles and vulgar crows and hares and wild geese and falcons and fishes and dogs and day-to-unicorns and solitary wasps and the thousand other animals he had met. They loomed around the church wall, the lovers and helpers of the wart. Some of them had come from the banners in the church where they were painted in heraldry, some from the waters in the sky and the fields about, but all downed. to the smallest shrew mouse had come to help on account of love. Wart felt his power grow.

Put your back into it, said a loose or pike off one of the heraldic banners. As he once did when I was going to snap you up, don't work like a stalling woodpecker, urged a tawny owl affectionately. Keep up a steady effort, my duck, and you will have it yet. A white friend said, now, Wart, if you were once able to fly the Great North Sea, surely you can coordinate a few little wing muscles here and there, fold your powers together, and with the spirit of your mind, it will come out like butter. The wart walked up to the Great Sword for the third time.

He put out his right hand softly and drew it out as gently as from a scabbard. There was a cheering, a noise like a herty-gurdy, which went on and on. And there's another quick passage I want to read. But this, okay, when we, when you and you and I were talking about the dark saber. Yes. And we were talking about like how much we wanted the claiming of the saber, the claiming of the sword, the claiming of your weapon to be tied to some sort of lesson that

you had learned. It is never more explicitly laid out than it is here by T.H. White, where he has animals from the story come in and say, remember when you learn this lesson? And remember when you learned this lesson? Remember when you did this? Marshal all of that. The spirit of your mice, not how strong. you are, Arthur,

Wart. The spirit of your mind, it will come out like butter. And it does. It's amazing. Absolutely amazing. This is one of the central texts not only for this podcast today, but

in our lives. Fair to say? Yes. This is a classic Mal, you know, received my T.H. White from my dad. Just like on the bookshelf. It's I mean, that passage is perfect. What a wonderful selection.

I think, like, in general, the way that the Arthurian legend is revisited teller after teller time after time, like you have the original Welsh, and then you move to Joffrey, and then you move to Thomas Mallory. Ask my dad if that has anything to do with my name. My mom always tells me about, you know,

Mallory on family time. but wouldn't roll out Barry Rubin thinking about Thomas Mallory. Authorian legend. Different spelling 1L versus 2, but even so. And then you get to T.H. White here. And, you know, we have these four novels that are put together inside of the ones of Future King is this collection. Right.

And the progression of tone across the story, I think gets to, like, a lot of what we're discussing today. There's the magical blade. There's the path to the sanction. the legitimacy. There's the magical aid in the form of Merlin. He's moving in the TH White, like backwards through time, right? So he knows he has this awareness of what is to come. There's this element of prophecy because of that. There's also this deeply tragic focus in the final quarter. And that idea, again, that like being the chosen one doesn't always lead to a happy

ending is just very, very central here. So this is just really like a wonderful. And then, you know, there's Steinbeck, which you're going to talk about in a minute. There's all of our modern TV versions. On and on the list goes, there are myriad examples that you could cite. And each one connects to the central archetypal element of the story of Excalibur of Arthur, of pulling the sword from the stone or receiving it from the Lady of the Lake. But they're all specific to that rendering. And so, like, T.H. White is writing in the 30s, in the 40s, in the 50s. He's living through world wars. There's this context of, like, what it means to rule, what it means to be in a position of power, the cost and toll of violence. And so, again, there's just this,

like, through line, but also these distinctions, teller to teller. And with Arthurian legend, more than probably anything else, right? Because we just have so many versions of it over time. I never tire of it personally. The words, of course, that Wart fails to read on the sword in this version, who so pulleth out the sword of the stone is right-wise, born king of all England, right? This is the ultimate conferring of legitimacy onto someone. I won't read the full passage, but what follows shortly after this is that his foster father and brother, Hector and Gay, are K are kneeling because he is the king of England now and supplicating themselves.

And it ends with, don't said the wart. Kay was kneeling down to. It is more than war could bear. Oh, do stop, he cried. If I have got to be this king, oh, father, don't kneel down like that because it breaks my heart. Please get up, Sir, Ector. And don't make everything so horrible.

Oh, dear, oh dear. I wish I'd never seen that filthy sword at all. I don't want it. And the wart burst into tears. I love that detail that T.H. Why it puts in where it's just like, this is the, this is it. This is the one that our beloved van wants. This is the magical sword you want. And what's like, fuck this sword. I've achieved. I have to be king now. Are you kidding me? It's a burden. The lady in the lake is, yeah. And to our earlier point about the idea of getting the sword at the end of the first chapter of a longer story, this happens at the end of the sword of the stone. As you mentioned, there are three other books than the once-a-future King collection. So Excalibur, of course, confers legitimacy on Arthur. He is king now, but it comes at the end of, you know, there is no sword in the stone, too, in Disney's animated version of it.

And I should say also, by the way, there used to be, I don't know if it's still there. I don't think it is, but there used to be a sword in a stone at Disneyland, and you could, like, line up to pull it. And you couldn't pull it out. And then, like, every, I don't know, once a day, they would, like, unlock the mechanism. So one person would pull it out of the stone. And it was my sister. Oh, man. Pulled the sword on the stone at Disneyland one time.

So I'll hail. King Morgan. Amazing. Do you want to talk about the sword of Gryffindor here just briefly and how it's inspired by Excalibur? Sure, yeah. We can do a hot second here on the old sword of Gryffindor. The very like note for note Excalibur-like manifestation and retrieval in Chamber of Secrets pulling the sword out of the sorting hat,

only a true Gryffindor could have pulled that out of the hat, Harry, Dumbledore says. Then again, with these recurring beats across the books, who does it in Deathly Hallows? Neville. And that moment for Neville, not only pulling the sword of Gryffindor, a character who had doubted so often,

whether he was a worthy Gryffindor, whether he was as brave as his fellows, he is the one that the sword comes to. He is the one who destroys the... Spoiler. He is the one who uses it to destroy a horrocks to kill Naginny. And the confidence that that gives him, he always had the ability.

He doesn't need the sword to be who he is, but it helps him believe. And he already did believe, which is why he was able to do it in the first place. So there's this push, pull, positive feedback loop there. And also, you know, earlier in Deathly Hallows, because Dumbledore has left the sword to Harry and his will, won't go into all the details about the copy and all of that,

but when the real sword, which has the sword, goblin forged, soaks up what makes it stronger, sort of absorbed basilisk venom because of what happened in the Chamber of Secrets, it can destroy Horcroxes as a result. And how does it get back to Harry? Where does... Spoiler, spoiler, spoiler, spoiler, spoiler, spoiler, where does the silver dough?

Where does Snape lead Harry to where he finds it? A lake! Right? So we've got the pulling out of the stone in the form of the sorting hat. We've got the lake with the dough leading Harry there, etc. It was also just like a very popular theory

for a long time that the sword was going to be a horrocks because so many of the objects associated with the founders were. Right. And so for that spin, for it to be an object that was capable of destroying them instead of being an object that had been corrupted and befowled by Voldemort in that way, it was a nice little twist. I love Neville Longbottom, much like Tolkien and I love a gardener. So, you know, big fan.

Big fan of Neville. All right. So you mentioned the lake. Let's talk about the lady of the lake. Please. In the John Steinbeck translation, the acts of King Arthur and his Noble Knights, which I had since I was a teen, absolutely loved. In this version of the story, Arthur has his sword, broke his sword. That's familiar.

We're going to talk about that a little later on, right? Broke his sword, and much like Thor without his hammer is feeling unworthy of being a leader because he has no sword. And so we start with his conversation with Merlin, right? He says, you must be proud to serve me, Merlin, a defeated king, a great and worthy knight who does not even have a sword, disarmed, wounded, and helpless. What is a knight without a sword? A nothing, even less than a nothing. Merlin says, somewhere in the world, there is defeat for everyone.

Some are destroyed by defeat, and they're made small and mean by victory. Greatness lives in one who triumphs equally over defeat and victory. but you want a sword? Well, very well, you shall have one. There is a sword nearby that she'll be yours, if I can get it for you. They rode on until they came to a broad lake of clear and lovely water.

And in the middle of the lake, Arthur saw an arm with a sleeve of rich white silk and the hand held up a sword by its scabbard. Then they saw a damsel who walked lightly on the surface of the lake. She is the lady of the lake, said Marlon. She will come to you now, and if you are courteous and ask her nicely,

she may give you the sword. The damsel said, The sword is mine, my lord, but if you will give me a gift when I ask it, you shall have the sword. On my honor, I will give you anything

you ask for, said the king. The king looked at his new sword and admired its beauty. Merlin asked, which do you like better, the sword or the scabbard? The sword, of course, said Arthur. The scabbard is far more precious,

said Merlin. While you wear the scabbard, you can lose no blood, no matter how deeply you are wounded. It is a magic scabbard. and you will do well to keep it always near you. So there's a couple things at play on the mind, a good old John Steinbeck as he wrote this, right?

This idea of, I mean, I feel like that conversation between Merlin and Arthur that starts here so much in common with the Freyathor conversation that we heard earlier, right? This idea of like there are lessons in defeat. Victory can also corrupt all this sort of stuff. Like might does not equal right, et cetera, et cetera, who you are. You don't need a sword. If you, okay, fine. If you feel like you need a sword, let's go to the lake, right?

Then there comes a promise. There is a price for this weapon. She extracts a promise from him. Very gow on the green knight sort of thing. Yeah, there's a cost here. We'll talk a little later about sort of the cost of the blade and something that comes up again and again. And then the concept of the scabbard.

Again, as we talked about cap and his shield, et cetera, et cetera, this idea that it's not the slimy blade that is the most precious thing here. It's this magical scabbard that keeps your blood in your body, my guy, that I absolutely love. What do you want to say? And on the scabbard point,

which I just adore, there is the literal magic of it, but more potently, the symbolism, it's not just that the scabbard is actually protecting you through its magic, through the supernatural element,

it's what that represents. If you've got the scabbard, if you're thinking about the scabbard, if your sword is sheathed, then you're not perpetrating violence on others either. And that's a way to avoid bloodshed, too. And his power, like, he who doesn't draw his sword

is oftentimes more powerful than he who does. Right. We'll get to our guy, Ned, later. Or she. I'm all right. So, and then I just, one last, One last Arthurian Excalibur thing comes via Ryan Johnson ever heard of him, director we love and admire.

This came via a listener sort of alerted me to this Ryan Johnson tweet from like 2018. From Alfred Lord Tennyson's Idols of the King. That's about the two sides of the story. So Tennyson wrote, quote, There likewise I beheld Excalibur before him at his crowning born, the sword that rose from out the bosom of the lake. and Arthur rode across and took it, rich with jewels, elf and uram on the hill, bewildering heart and eye, the blade so bright that men are blinded by it. On one side, Graven, and the oldest tongue of all this world, quote, take me, but turn the blade and ye shall see, and written in the speech, ye speak yourself, quote, cast me away. And sad was Arthur's face taking it, but old Merlin counselled him. take thou and strike the time to cast away is yet far off.

So this great brand the king took and by this will beat his foeman down. So Ryan Johnson treated this out. Yeah, Ryan don't just treat this out because he was talking about the dual nature of the sword, take me, cast me away, you know, which is something that is definitely on his mind as he wrote the last Jedi. Yeah. But this idea of, yeah, when to pick up the sword, when to let it go, when to throw it away. It makes me kind of emotional to think about. And the last but at least, the thing that I want to say about a scalabar, both,

whether it comes from a sword in a churchyard with a bunch of animal friends around you or from a watery tart in a lake, this is a blade deeply connected to nature and the land. We mentioned this at the top. This idea that like Arthur King of Camelot, king of this land and this idea of the the myth of Camelot and it's, you know, and Avalon, et cetera, et cetera, and as magical locations in and of themselves and how the sword is connected to the land. And I will once again shout out the enchanted forest chronicles by Patricia Red because that sword, the sword of the sleeping king, et cetera, et cetera, is connected to the power of the forest and the power of the land. And it is not about using that sword to slice into someone. It is about using it to sort of maintain the nature, the precious, gorgeous sanctity. of the home of the thing of that good of that good tilled earth that thing worth protecting all right anything else on scalaver before me before we move on just that it's you know it's the thing that it's the it's the reference that that comes up the most in the in the subsequent tales like so

much when we talk about the origin of the trope like so much traces back to that legend and I think that it was a good choice from the from the midnight boys to say that from Van to say that would be the one I want. Why not? Better than picking the green axe, you know? I'm talking about fine print that people aren't reading. That one. A lot of caveats, a lot of contracts.

Come with that one. All right. This episode is brought to you by Spectrum Business. Fast, reliable Internet means everything for your business. And even this podcast, that's why I trust Spectrum Business. They keep companies of all sizes connected with Internet, advanced Wi-Fi, phone, TV, mobile services, plus 24-7 U.S.-based support, millions of business owners already trust Spectrum Business.

So visit Spectrum.com slash business to learn more. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. This episode is brought to by Borris Head. What if we told you the taste of deep-fried turkey is now available at your local deli? Well, Boris Head just did that. Bursting with flavor, perfectly seasoned with that indulgent taste that usually means planning your whole day around it.

presenting the friars turkey breast only from boar's head the backyard tradition now available behind the counter visit your local deli today discover the craftsmanship behind every bite boarshead committed to craft since 1905 let's move on to the next session which is weapon forged uh and we're going to start with star wars ever heard of it um we already mentioned a bunch of this so you know we'll skim through some of it, but this idea that, like, the reason we're bringing up lightsabers is because of that important step for Jedi and classic training to make

your own, build your own lightsaber, talk about some of the reasons why, but we can't talk about lightsabers and not talk about the original lightsaber moment. Steve, will you play this clip, please? Which reminds me.

I have something here for you. Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough. But your uncle was. wouldn't allow it. He feared you might follow old Obi-Wan on some damn fool idealistic crusade like your father did. What is it? Your father's light-saber. This is the weapon of a Jedi knight, not as clumsy or random as a blast-ness, an elegant weapon for a more civilized age.

For over a thousand generations the Jedi Knights with the guardians of the of peace and justice in the old Republic before the dark times before the empire. Stole the best. So good. There's so much of what we've already

talked about in here, right? This idea of like you're like, okay, this is all, of course, a very from a certain point of view, conversation. Someone thinks that Obi-1 says here. Doesn't feel completely true. Give us some tweaks, minor cosmetic tweaks that George Lucas decided to make to the story he was telling. But still, the idea of this is your father's weapon.

This is your father's weapon that failed to stop the rise of the empire, right? This is your father's weapon that you might take up and follow me onto another crusade, just like I went on before with your father, call to adventure, your father's gun, etc., etc., etc., etc. a more civilized age. And then just the sound of the lightsaber in the first place, like one of the most important sounds in all of pop culture. But as you mentioned before, when we dive into more of the lore in like the animated series, we learn a lot more about the fact that, you know, if Luke had a more straightforward training process to becoming a Jedi Knight,

he would have built his own lightsaber. So do you want to talk about this process that we learn about in Clone Wars? Sure. I would love to. I love the gathering. I'll say on the Luke front. Yeah. This is just, again, as beat for beat. Now, Star Wars has a lot of influences and George Lucas has talked about them at length over the years. The samurai tradition is elemental. The hero's journey, as we've discussed, elemental. But our Arthurian legend is also... Dune. Yes, Dune. The desert planet.

Our authoritarian legend is so central. as well. And if you're watching on the New Hope DVD, I don't know actually if these featureettes are on the Disney Plus version as well. But like one of the featureettes discoveries from inside, and they have all these, all the Star Wars movies have so many like amazing little featurets about how they were made. But there's this great quote from the set director of the first film, Roger Christian. He says, I knew reading the script that this light-same, was Excalibur. So I knew it had to be special.

What were lightsabers originally called? Laser swords. Jedi Knight, that invoking the idea of a crusade in the quote we just played. This is the Arthurian legend. And the idea of like the knighting aspect of receiving your blade, whether you are being knighted here as Lucas by Obi-Wan or you are forging it yourself later, there's the magical awakening, but also the parallel. there that is just, I don't know if this is the place to talk about this, maybe not. But I love, because like the idea of peacekeeping is present in the clip we just played, this is another part of the Star Wars canon's assessment of the role of lightsabers and the Jedi Order across the galaxy that I really love, like the way that they interrogate this inside of the tale increasingly over time. So like, if you go to Clone Wars, which we'll talk about with

gathering. A couple of our favorite episodes that we've discussed on other pods, like the Mandelor episodes when we meet Satin, who's a pacifist, the Mandelor plot, she says to Obi-One, for a man sworn to peace, you take an unseemly pleasure in the injuries of others. Voyage of temptation, the next episode, this conversation between Satine and Anakin, Satine says, I remember a time when Jedi were not generals, but peacekeepers. And Anakin says, we are a protector, highness, yours at the moment. We fight for peace. And Satine says, what an amusing contradiction. And I love that that conversation is in the story

because that's something that as consumers of it, we would be talking about. And again, it's that idea of, like, are you more powerful if you keep your sword in the scabbard, right? If, like, which is Sateen's approach to ruling, right? The sword stays in the scabbard. And I think that in terms of George Lucas and his many influences,

or deeply problematic, J.K. Rowling and her many influences. They are magpies, and there's nothing inherently wrong with being a magpie of story and mythos. I remember that being a huge critique of Harry Potter at first came out because, like, this is essentially the one ring and this essentially that. And I'm like, yeah, it's true. But Tolkien did it too. You know, it's like we're constantly pulling from the myths that came before us. And as long as we're injecting them with enough new imagination and new emotional and authentic. authentic emotionality, then that's great because the myth builds and goes ever on. Absolutely.

And on that authentic emotionality front, like, if we think about that moment with Luke and Obi-Wi-1, and so you're a recurring point about the wisdom of the wielder, you know, is the weapon inherently good or evil? Is it inherently used for right or for ill? Well, so much of it comes down to intention and what you, intend and seek to do with it. And I love that part of the lightsaber's initial role for us as consumers, for us as viewers, is that it cuts a hole into the universe for us, right? Like we have this lovely idea and a new hope of taking your first step into a larger world. Well, when do we get our first

download on the force? And when does Luke? It's in the same conversation. It's on the heels of receiving the lightsaber. That's what slices that little opening that Luke can take that step into so that Obi-1 can tell him and us about the force, about this binding together across the galaxy, which is just wonderful. To get into this Clone War section, though, this is here directly as a rebuttal to the Midnight Boys question of whether or not a lightsaber is a magical weapon. Mali, what would you say to that? Well, of course it is.

The chiber crystal inside of the blade, there's this connection, in addition to to the actual magic of the crystal and of the blade, there's this connection, this bond between the crystal, between the blade and the wielder that I think is, you know, that's the quintessential fantasy rendering of the tale. So when we get the, in Clone Wars, season five, episodes six and seven, the gathering and a test of strength,

we get this really wonderful, like, lore, a building moment where we see Asoka, Yoda take these Jedi youngling two, Illam, RIP Illam, we miss you and you deserved better than what happened, to forge their sabers, but before they can build their sabers and craft them in their own image, which you'll talk about in a minute, they have to find their crystals. The crystals have to choose them, right? Just as the wand has to choose the wizard. And so it is this trial, it is this right of passage, but it is also this beautiful moment of connection. And I want to talk a little bit more

when we get to reforging blades later about Asoka's white lightsabers and what they represent. But in the 2016 E.K. Johnson novel, Asoka, there's a passage that I think sums up quite well how the crystals communicate. So I'll read that here because I think it's relevant here. the crystals grew, clear as ice and cold until they found the hands that waited for them.

They added structure in an ordered way one prism at a time, and while they grew, they waited. From time to time, someone would arrive and call to them, like the harmony of a perfect song. Each crystal had a chosen bearer, and only that bearer would hear the music and see the glow. All others would pass by, seeing nothing but more ice. So that call in both directions You are calling to your crystal It is calling to you That idea of song again Joe

Like that frequency, that hum, that harmony We hear it when someone ignites a lightsaber But think of what it would feel like To be a force user in that world And hear that crystal call to you And know that you had found this thing That would allow you to take the next step in your journey It's amazing

But on the on the subject of word choice And singing, humming harmony, something like that When I was rereading the enchanted forest for his chronicles to sort of try to find something. The word she uses a lot for when the

sword, this sword like sting sort of senses danger trouble, bad spells. It jangles. It jangles when a bad spell or a wizard or whatever is near. And I just like, again, it's that music

and sort of like a what's out of tune? What's not quite right here? In a test of strength after the Khyber, has been found, we are building our lightsaber. This is classic olivander shit here. But we've got our guy, David Tennant, who plays the droid who young here, who's talking to the younglings about the material of their lightsaber.

Steve, will you play this clip, please? The lightsaber is a Jedi's only true ally. But how do they work? Yes. You are broadly crystals, but they're all useless unless you give them life. Do you know how to awaken the force within the crystal? Oh, wookie! Rare you are to the Jedi.

Proud your people must be. Unique. Just as your lightsaber, will we? Describe what you see your saber to be. No, no, no, not what you imagine, but what do you feel in your hand? Concentrate. What will make you strong in battle? humble in retreat

what connects with your force? What will make you strong in battle and humble in retreat? Fantastic. Incredible stuff. And also to go back, the lightsaberers of Jedi is only true ally, to go back again

to that idea of feeling alone in the world on your hero's journey, but you've got this trusty friend on your hip to help you. Love that. Once you're constantly dropping it like Anakin. Then you're really and truly alone.

Or like barely concealing it like Obi-Man. Okay. Last one at least, we did not want to talk about forging a weapon without talking about our guys. Saka and Avatar The Last Airbender. One of the greatest episodes of Avatar The Last Airbender is Saka's master, season three, episode four. for those who haven't watched Avatar last year, Bender, what are you doing with your life? But Saka, who is Katara's sister, brother,

is traveling with a pack of benders. They are all able to bend elements of the earth to their will to fight and defend, et cetera, et cetera. The connection to the natural elements again. To the natural earth. Saka does not have this power, right? He has a lot going for him, and he's had this trusty boomerang

helping him out throughout the whole thing. But he does not have, and he's feeling very unworthy and low and unspecial about himself. And so he levels up in season three, just before, there's only three seasons, just before our final battle, he levels up leading up to the final battle.

And it's Saka, as he meets Master Pian Dau, is Saka saying that he has a lot to learn and he's not sure if he's worthy that peaks this master's, swordsmith's interest. Right. He's had so many brash heroes come in and say, I'm the best.

You will train me or you will make a sword for me and it's Saka humbling himself and saying, I don't know. I'm not sure. That makes Mr. P. and I want to train him. And very crucially, help him make his own sword. Steve, president of the Saka fan club, will you please play this clip?

Choosing the correct material is the most important Step in crafting a sword. You must trust your steel with your life. Choose carefully. Do you think we can make a sword out of a meteorite? We'll make a sword unlike any other in the world. Creativity, versatility, intelligence. These are the traits that define a great swordsman. And these are the traits that define a great swordsman. And these are the traits that devils

find you. You told me you didn't know if you were worthy. But I believe that you are more worthy than any man I have ever trained. I'm going to cry. Weeping. I love that show. So Saka's sword made out of a meteor that falls to Earth at the beginning of the episode, his space sword. These guys are big sword of the morning.

Arthur Dane fans. They love House Dane. But, and we had a listener, Chad, writing about this, about the fact that Saka loses the sword in the final battle in order to save his friends, right? Chad wrote, Boca and Saka have also have the same, I don't need this weapon to lead moment, as Saka says goodbye to the sword as it falls to Earth.

And this idea, yes, your sword is your friend and your ally, we will hammer this again and again and again. We love this theme, but also hold the objects that confer power and legitimacy and whatever loosely when it comes to protecting the things that really matter your flesh and blood friends, I suppose. They're keys, right? They're keys that unlock something. And maybe that's about your task or your mission in the moment. It's your quest, but it's also something inside of you in that sense of worth.

that the weapon can confer, help you discover, was ultimately there, and it's you and it's yours. That, man, that clip really just got me. That's such a beautiful stretch. I think to the email from Chad, like this was one of the things that we really were lamenting in Mando season three, because, like, that,

despite the fact that I still see a bright, dark saber Grogoo future, as I think many Amanda viewers do, not only do what is there no issue with Bo casting aside the Dark Saber, it was something we were craving for so much of the run. Don't let this object be the source of your worth. Don't let other people tell you that you need it to be who you are. Does Bo get there eventually and say Mandalorians are stronger together? Yes, but I think it's a lot more powerful if she makes the choice to lay it down.

She had let the sword go. Yeah. Rather than it being taken. Crushing it in his hand. Yeah. Having it be something she does rather something done to her. Yeah. I mean, that's just more interesting storytelling.

I cannot leave a weapons forge section without referencing my problematic creator Fave, Joss Whedon, and Buffy Vampire Slayer, because there's a great episode in season in 2003 of Buffy, where there's a character named the judge and the prophecy, the legend of the judge is no weapon forged can stop him. No weapon forged, no weapon forged, etc.

Because Buffy Van Bire Slayer is like the irreverent show that it is, she shows up with like a giant rocket launcher that someone like steals for her and the judge is like, no weapon forge can stop me and she says that was then, this is now and he goes, what's that do right before she blows him up? So like

I always think when I think about a weapons forward, no weapons forged. And Buffy's, you know, that's just a little cheat code that Buffy used to use the rocket launcher. All right, we talked about weapons forged, weapons broken, weapons remade. Love it. That idea of the broken sword, the broken weapon that is rebuilt, which we will talk about length in a second, I think feeds back into that idea of the inherited blade from your parent. your father, your mother, whatever, of oftentimes the blade is broken in battle. It shattered. Something horrible happened, and we didn't make it through.

But you got to rebuild the weapon. And what do you make that's new and fresh and built just for you out of the shards of the broken weapon that came before? I love, I love this idea. The defeat, loss of honor, the wielder, and then the subsequent victory in restoration of honor is achieved by reforging it. it either by the original owner or their heir. This is where we're going to talk about opera for a second.

And Wagner. We're going to talk about Wagner, the ring cycle very briefly, just because the ring cycle. You were you, Palpatine, Night at the Opera? You love a night at the opera with Palpatine. Me too. You guys sheave. He knew how to party, man. The ring cycle, because it is so influential, of course, to Tolkien is like something

that's worth thinking about. I'm just going to read a little plot, a part from the ring cycle. Hey, Wagner, see if it sounds familiar. Heroic Sigmund has a sword. It's called no tongue or Graham, depending on who you are. Sigmund was able to remove the sword

from the bran stalk tree where the god Odin himself had placed it. Very Excalibur, Arthur, etc., right? It's a tree instead of a stone. Odin said that whoever could remove the sword would be its rifle owner and the sword would be always victorious. In Wagner, the sword is shattered and then reforged by Sigmund's son Siegfried, who then uses it to slay the dragon Faulkner. Only, quote, he who does not know fear can reforge no tongue. Siegfried reforges Notung in a cave with a box of scraps.

Well, in a cave anyway, and he breaks his grandfather, Odin's spear with it. So this is a- Welcome to the podcast. This is a classic. So funny. Weapons-reforged moment. It's his father's sword. He uses it to break his grandfathers, who is Odin's spear, et cetera, et cetera.

It's a whole thing. And this is now, now is the time. I know we already talked about needle. We already talk about the Catspaw. But now is the time to talk about Game of Thrones and Valerian Steel swords. And we're going to talk about my favorite Valerian steel sword. And then we're going to talk about Mallory's favorite Valerian Steel Sword. And everyone's going to have a good time.

All right. I am entering the conversation here with the melting down of Ned Stark's sword ice into two smaller valerian steel swords, Oathkeeper, and widows whale. Ice, of course, starts the story, right? He who passes a sentence should swing the swords. Ned Stark's massive house of Stark. I love the phrase ancestral blade.

Enststrel blade. Ice. When Ned Stark. Loses his head. And House Stark is scattered to the winds. The end of book one, season one, however you prefer to think about it. Winlanister, that whole piece of shit. House Lannister does not have an ancestral Valerian steel blade.

They always wanted one. They don't have one. So what does he do? It melts down ice into two new swords. Shameful. And so the season premiere of season four is called Two Swords, because, you know, Taiwan and Linister's melted down one sword into two. Let's start just talking more broadly about Valerian Steel.

Linsteel is magical outside of its use as to stop White Walker weapons in the show and the show only until George decides it's true in the books as well. But, of course, there's that very key moment. And we'll talk about, obviously we're going to talk about Narsal a little later on, but like there's that moment. Of course. where John is able to stop the weapons of the White Walker with his sword. And he's like, what the fuck? And we're all like, what the fuck? Valerian Steel can do that, right?

One of the great thrills of my life. An incredible magical moment with the sword in that regard. But Mallory, what do you want to say about the steel itself and the magic that is inherent to Valerian Steel? Well, you know, we open the pod with that question of our Valerian Steel swords, magical blades. And we're going to explore for a minute why the answer is an emphatic, resounding, yes. You mentioned ice, and we can start there because it's our first foray into learning about this, a passage from a Game of Thrones, the first book in a Song of Ice and Fire. Ice, that sword was called.

It was as wide across as a man's hand in taller. even than Rob. The blade was Valerian Steel. Spell forged and darkest smoke. Nothing held an edge like Valerian Steel. These distinctive ripples that are now very familiar to us. An edge that neither time nor battle can blunt. Yes.

This tie to old Valeria. Spell forged. Magic. The flames, the 14 flames, the volcanic fire of old Valeria, but the tether between that and dragon fire. So this is another, not only are the blades themselves tied to this magical forging,

there's a heightening of how precious they are, because the secrets are working, the magic is lost. The doom of Valeria, which you can hear us talk about for, you know, hours. Just hours, upon an hour. House of the Dragon Ponds.

Yeah. The number of people who know even how to rework Valerian Steel, which is obviously germane to Joe's beloved Oathkeeper and Widows Whale, I also love Oathkeeper. Though, again, shame on Tywin Lannister. Frankly, how dare he? The secret of how to make these to forge them in the first place is lost after the doom. So there is not only the might of the blade itself,

but the sense that they are few and sacred. And so when you need them to stop something like the White Walker's threat, well, it's a math problem, but also it really heightens the sense of like the chosen nature of wielding one and what it means to be a bearer of a blade like that. I'll say on the ability to defeat the White Walker's front, I feel like this is a stab pretty close to established book canon too because of the conversation. I put a lot of stock in like what Sam reads in books.

And I'm like, what if we never get wins? You know, what if we never get dream? This is how I tell myself that this is here already. So there's this exchange between Sam and John about the others, which is the name and the text. The armor of the others is proof against most ordinary blades, if the tails can be believed, said Sam, and their own swords are so cold they shatter steel. Fire will dismay them, though, and they are vulnerable to obsidian. I'll pause here, and the quote, obsidian is dragon glass, which is also a magical blade because if it's tied to not only like the earth and the natural elements of the volcanoes, but dragon fire. Resuming the quote.

He remembered the one he had faced in the haunted forest and how it had seemed to, you know, it had seemed to be able to. to melt away when he stabbed it with the dragonglass dagger John had made for him. I found one account of the long night that spoke of the last hero slaying others with a blade of dragon steel. Supposed, dragon steel, John frowned? Valerian steel? That was my first thought as well. Until we get a printed page that says otherwise I'm like, this is book added to.

Fair enough. I just didn't want any nerves writing in being like, excuse me. This hasn't happened in the books yet. I'm just like, you know, with Sam porn through the scrolls for anything we can hold on to. And I said nerds lovingly, by the way, but like the synchronicity of dragon fire, dragon glass, dragon steel, all being the tools to dismantle the others is most likely what George is working towards. Oathkeeper and widow's whale are the two swords that are made out of ice. Taiwan gives one to Joffrey. as a wedding gift

and one to Jamie. We're going to talk about Jamie in a second, but I want to talk about Joff. Jaff, who uses the sword to then cut up the book that Tyrion gave him. What an asshole. Absolute Joffrey bullshit.

And then asks the crowd to name his sword and he's like, oh, when I was well, I love that, blah, blah. Anyway, watching these clips of Joffrey just made me miss him so much. I love Jack Lison so much. What's your favorite of Jaffrey's

three swords, which is your favorite name? you a lion's tooth head or you a heart eater head? Or is it all Writerswell for you? Heart eater is obviously the best name. So funny. What an absolute maniac job. What a piece of shit. What I love about this is like obviously Widdows whale is not why he dies.

I mean, tell Sersia, I wonder to know it was Aletta. Spoilers for Game of Thrones. But the fact that he dies so quickly after getting this sword. feels somehow prophetic and cursed and all that sort. You know, it just feels like because we're going to talk now about Oathkeeper and the idea of the spirit of Ned Stark or House Stark. Honoring House Stark, yeah. Inside the blade.

So I love the idea that like Geoffrey quickly dies. Right. And we should say that when Tywin gives Jamie the blade in the books very specifically, this feels almost like a mockery to Jamie Wright because he has lost. his sword hand. And he cannot... I want that hand. I cannot use the sword the way that he once could.

So now it's just like a symbolic... Symbol of his shame. And Taiwan is like, retire, take this sword, be the Lord of Castley Rock. That's what I want for you, right? And so Jamie sees... Do you know what legacy is?

A slap in the face, right? A slap in the face. Yes. So what does he do instead with it? He gives it a... away. Let's listen to one of my favorite moments in all of television history. Steve

player, please. Fulian steel. Hmm. It's yours. I can't accept. As we forged from Ned Stark's sword. You use it to defend Ned Stark's daughter. He swore an oath

to return the Stark ghost to their mother. Lady Stark's dead. Dyer's probably dead too, but there's still a chance to find Sansa and get her somewhere safe. I'll find her for Lady Catlin and for you. They say the best swords of names. Any ideas?

Oathkeeper. Unbelievable. Jamie and Brian are so important to me. Same. Love. The look that Jamie, the Nicola Costa Waldo, gives her when she says I'll do it for Lady Catlin and for you, it's burned into my brain forever.

And the look when she says Oathkeeper, this character who called him Kingslayer, the gratitude, oath breaker, like the gratitude for a character who has spent so much of his life, does the lion concern himself with the opinion of the sheep telling himself he doesn't care what people think? And then forging this genuine meaningful connection with somebody who sees him clearly saying you are not the thing that everyone says and allows themselves to believe. You don't need to be defined by. stabbing your king in the back, you can be defined by the knightly good of protecting and helping others. For Brianna of all people who holds the ideal of knighthood and chivalry and honor so sacred. Like there's no one who it could mean more to hear that from than her. And then we build to the knighting in the night of the seven kingdoms where they're returning that to each other. It's just like one of the most beautiful things. And before we get to the nighting, which. is another one of the most important moments of television history. So good.

There's a stop along the way outside of River Run, where Jamie Branner briefly reunited, and she tries to give the sword back. She's found Sonsa, right? She tries to give the sword back. Steve, will you play this clip, please? You gave it to me for a purpose. I've achieved that purpose.

It's yours. It will always be yours. It's one of the most romantic things. that's ever happened because if you're me, you decide that he is like talking about his heart, right? And then the sword becomes, or, you know, at least his admiration, his love, however you wanted to find it, chivalric, or otherwise.

It's hers, always. It belongs to her. It's not on loan, blah, blah. We should say the lion's head pommel on the sword gets brand in some sticky situations in general. It's not a great, look for her. But then,

and what I love about this, so like Widows Whale is, am I for a little bit, right? Because Joffrey died, rest of pieces, he pieces of shit. But eventually,

in the show, Jamie picks up Widow's Whale and takes it with him to Winterfell. And then the two halves of ice are reunited, oathkeeper and Widows whale are reunited at Winterfell

to defend the family stronghold of House Stark against the White Walkers in the long night. And that is very important to me. I would always, like, when he picks up Widows Whale, again, I really wish he had renamed the sword, but when he picks up Widows' Whale, and I'm like, I, for that final run of Thrones, I was thinking it as, like, two halves of, like, a best friend's necklace or something like that, you know what I mean? These, like, these, like, two twin cores of.

these weapons for Jamie and Brienne as they reunite together. And of course, he uses Widows Whale to Knight Brianne. And again, that is one of the most important things that has ever happened in television. We're big fans of the TV show, for the most part, most of the TV show. But also, we should say in the book, one of the things the TV show skipped over, Lady Stoneheart, one of my favorite parts of the book, There's this key part of the Lady Stoneheart story where she is demanding revenge from Brian, right? She sees the lineshead Pommel as like a sign of betrayal from Brian.

She's demanding her. Either you take this revenge for me or you die or whatever, and she's strung Brian up, and Brian says one word which is sword, I will take of the sword and do over revenge. for you. It's like doing a coup, but a little different, right? I don't believe that she actually is going to do that and kill Jubilinus for Lady Stoneheart, but that is what she says. The word sword, give me oathkeeper. I will stay alive a little longer.

Anything you want to say about that about sort of Oathkeeper in the book versus the show or? It's just tremendous, you know, incredibly important and wonderful. And like when Jamie chooses to go to Winterfell and chooses to fight, you know, that promise that you're citing when he tells Brian at Riveron that it's hers, that has to come in tandem with the rejection of this other thing eventually, right? I won't stay here just because you,

Sersi, are telling me to. This is a thing that I have to do. I have to honor this promise not only to other people, but to myself. and like the the hesitation, the doubt about what he was and could do after losing

his sword hand, how that had been this central defining thing in terms of how he thought about himself, the legend of Jamie Lannister, like the trepidation of going to train with brawn and secret. This is where I fuck his wife, right? If they don't hear her scream, like that's the only way

you can feel safe. And that's a brawn, a brawn quote, not a Jamie one one, to be clear. to build toward not only taking a sword into his hand again, and for it being that one, for all the meaningful reasons that you outlined, but to go to Briann and say that he would be honored to fight beside her. Again, like, it's just the journey in the arc that they were on together.

And that he then feels worth, I mean, he's done some sort, some training with his other hand at that point, but then he feels worthy of a Valerian steel sword, and he picks one up, whereas he felt like he needed to give one away before. Now he's ready to defend the kingdom, to stand shoulder to shoulder to Brian. In an episode that I couldn't see very well,

but they were fighting shoulder to shoulder in the scroll on the battlements of Winterfell. And that brings us to other valerian steel swords. We're going to talk about what I believe is Mallory's favorite of a ballooning sword now, which is long claw. Mallory owns a replica of long claw. What I think is really,

like my first thought was like, we're going to talk about a little keeper, of course, and I was like, of course, we have to talk about long claw as well. And it sort of belongs in this weapons remade section

because it gets a new pommel. I'll just sort of like slide in it in here. But this idea that the stark ancestral blade gets melted down and given to people who are not Starks. Rob doesn't get it, nobody gets it. And so John, what does he get? And he gets a blade that is not burdened with this sort of like incestral,

take up your father's blade sort of thing. Ned Stark is and isn't his father at the same time, blah, blah, blah. I want you to tell me everything you think about this. But should we first listen to the old bear and John and the handing off of this sort. All right, see if we play this clip. Thank you. I thought a wolf was more appropriate for you than a bear.

So I had a new pommel made called Longclaw. Works as well for a wolf as a bear, I think. This is Valerian steel. It was my father's sword. His father before him. The Mormons have carried it for five centuries. It was meant for my son, Jora. He brought dishonour to our house,

but he had the grace to leave the sword before he fled from Westeros. My lord, you honour me, but I can't. Oh, you can. And you will. I wouldn't be standing here if it wasn't for you and your beast. Or would he dead man try to kill me.

So you'll take it. Okay, I really want to quickly... I want to quickly say, beautiful moment. Good old Gior. We love House Mormont here on the House of Our Pot. Like this podcast would be called House Mormon, and it would be true. But I extended the clip a little bit, not just so that we could hear John give a classic, I don't want it moment, right? I can't take it.

But also, you are my queen. You are my Lord Commander. The moment, the reason he earns the blade is fighting off the undead. And this is a crossing of a threshold moment. Like, you know, dire wolves are here. But the whole idea is magic has gone out of this land, right? And it's starting to come back. And the attack of the undead on the night's watch, on Commander Moramont specifically,

and the way in which John defends him, this is what earns him his blade. So it is that crossing the threshold. learning about the magical world and getting your magical blade at the same time. Mallory, should have burn the bodies. They didn't, you know, should have burned the bodies. Who will, who will listen? I just, I love Long Claw so much. Very difficult for me to pick one favorite magical blade across all stories, but this is in the,

this is in the finalist set. Definitely, uh, in the consideration set for my, my ultimate choice. I love so many things about Longclaw and John initially receiving Longclaw, but also then every step along the way with Longclaw. Do your point about the re-emergence of magic? Also, just if we think about where John is as a character at that moment, both in the books and in the show, and there are some differences and how, you know, how much time we spent in his head in the book really feeling his, like, deep sense of loneliness. You know, the world was out there. that quote, I just love so much from the first book. John is basically grounded when this happens, right?

He has aired and transgressed and he can't settle in or accept the bullying and the shame or the idea, the realization that this thing he longed for all his life and held as this, like, way for him, a person who always felt like an other in his own home to find purpose and meaning and belonging. this is what this was all along and nobody told me. And for like, I'm getting emotional. For these characters who say the words, take the black and give up their names, right? They accept this new family, but they have to let go of the place they came from before.

And for some of them, it's like a path to something other than death or castration or whatever the case may. be. But for some of them, John, Sam, it's because they weren't allowed or didn't feel like they were allowed to be the person they wanted to be in the place that they grew up. And to feel like everything had to be cast aside and then receive something that's like this beacon of possibility and a reminder, not in like the value of the material, but in the presence of magic all around you, It's just like an incredibly meaningful thing. And Longclaw is, it's a symbol and a representation of all of the different aspects of who John is, even though he doesn't see that at the time that he receives it.

How could he, right? But the Valerian steel, the Valerian, Targaryen. Spoilers. Origin of the blade. how that connects to John's true lineage. The Stark pommel. Now, Ghost is my number one, right? My absolute fave.

So to have ghosts there, to have that line from the Lord Commander about how long claw works as well for a dire wolf. As a bear is wonderful, but like, that's the stark. Then John is a stark, and John struggle to the way that he grapples with what it means to be a stark, the way that he dreams about wandering through the crypts of Winterfell. the journey that he makes over the course of the story to embracing the part of him that is a stark. Well, there it is in the pommel. The Knight's Watch aspect of it.

The fact that the Lord Commander gifted it to him, there's this just great northern aspect of the fact that it came from House Mormont, but this is John's found family, and it's not an easy, neat, and tidy road to forging it, but the closest bonds that he will make in his life with Sam are here. And so for this to be the place, a place that for so many represents being cast out, for this to be the place where John could find this like to have this like christening of a new identity and a new stage of his life is really meaningful. You zip forward all the way to something like season seven's beyond the wall. Yeah. And genuinely one of the first characters we ever bonded over our shared love of Jora Mormont. And you finally get that moment between John and Jora about Longclaw.

Now, is there a part of you who's like, John, it's pretty fucked up that you never offered this to Leanna? There is. There is. But it doesn't sap the meaning of John telling Jorah that Gior gave this to him, that he changed the pommel, but it's still Longclaw and offering it back to Jora. And what does Jorah do? He says he gave it to you. This is like their version of that Brian Jamie moment. I'm not his son, John says.

I brought shame onto my house. Jora replies, I broke my father's heart. I forfeited the right to claim this sword. It's yours. May it serve you well and your children after you. Like this is now a thing that John can pass down. And then Jora gets to wield heartsbane, which Sam gives to him. Sam took it from his ungrateful, unworthy father.

And so for these objects, these ancestral blades that are like so tied to that Taiwan idea of legacy, that's part of why he lust for one, right? So tied to the idea of the family name and the house and your role and shaping the course of West Roece history. For the characters who we come to care about the most to give them to each other, is just like an incredibly powerful thing. Well, and to earn them, it goes back to what you're saying about Milneur,

where like the idea of like, no, do you, are you just given this sword as like, you know, in house Charlie, it would have been handed down from shitty father to shitty son. You know what I mean? Fuck, fuck, Randall Charlie.

But instead, Jora earns his, right, from Sam. John earns his from the Lord Commander. Brian earns hers from Jamie. And Jamie, I guess, decides he's earned his own vibe from himself. You know what I mean? And it's just sort of like, yeah, they're given, but they're earned.

And that is the key. And I think that idea, like, one of my favorite aspects of John and the Lord Commander is the idea when the Lord Commander, like, basically made John his valet and John is like, this is a huge insult. And everyone else is like, don't you see? Right. He's grooming you for command. He's grooming you.

This is a huge honor. And so, you know, giving him his blade. And then the fact that, yeah, like, John gets to be here what he never was in Winterfell, which is seen for who he is, full of promise, full of leadership, full of, you know, heroism. You mentioned heart spain, the stolen blade of House Tarley. Dark Sister, we talked about a lot, of course, when we talk about House of the Dragon, Bright Roar, Blackfire. These incredible names. Incredible names. George!

But we do want to do an honorable mention for Dawn. Sort of the morning from House Dane is made from a fallen star, not Valerian Steel, but we got this great email from Stacey that I want to read about. This is so good. Dawn. Stacey writes, The legend states that the island of Starfall was raised in a river around the site of a fallen star, and dawn forged from the heart of that fallen star.

I find this very reminiscent of the Isle of Avalon, where Excalibur was forged and then given by and returned to the Lady of the Lake in some versions of the story. This connection is especially interesting when we consider the possibility that Dawn might be Lightbringer, the legendary sword of Azora High, used to end the long night. But it's also possible that Lightbringer was not literally a sword, but instead of flaming slash hot weapon, this makes Danny's drag. The dragons fit the bill. I wrote my grad... This is so cool. I wrote my graduate thesis on the women of Arthurian legend in popular culture. This is hashtag goals for me.

Yeah, honestly. It's like, incredible. So cool. And a major exploration of my thesis was on DeNaris as a King Arthur figure, with her dragons as the sword in the stone, which in legend is sometimes a sword of scaliber, and other times a completely different sword than Excalibur. Regardless, her dragons are born from the stone,

and to many her, quote, unquote, birthing them shows her as the true queen. I find it fascinating that for DeNaris, her weapon is something that she brings to life and she is thereafter known as mother. Whereas for Arthur, it's pulling out a sword, a bit on the nose. No? Makes me think of a certain Circey quote. And quote unquote, the prince that was promised sounds a lot like, quote, unquote, the once and future king, which circles back to the connection between Arthurian legend

and a song of Ice and Fire. and more specifically, Arthur and Dineris. I also had a lot of fun in my thesis comparing Melisandra with Morgan Lafay which opens up its own lane of inquiry to what degree

are women, especially sorceresses, considered quote unquote magical weapons themselves in older legend slash fantasy that is often heavily influenced by Judeo-Christian religion.

This is something that comes up in fairy tales too, another focus of mine. Stacey, do you want to be friends? This is so cool. I love this email. I always loved

whatever we're talking about the prince or princess who was promised blah blah and all the you know born of smoke all the all the pieces and the ways in which like neville and harry they fit for both john and denaris and the idea that her dragons are you know her sword i always loved that me too anything else you want to say about stacey's incredible email uh it's just uh fantastic thank you stacey number two in the azra a high adjacent canon after born amidst salt and smoke, is he a ham. So, elite company. MCU. We're going to circle back to mule on your hair, right?

Mew, meo, me. Me. Thor Love and Thunder is not necessarily our favorite installment of the Thor franchise, but it connects the concept of the weapon reforged rather brilliantly with Jane, her illness,

her worthiness, and how the weapon itself is even stronger because of its broken apart quality when you have her wielding Milneur and the little fragments of it can zoom out and then come back to her. And Thor's like, fuck, I never did that for me. It's such an interesting and cool concept

of the evolution of Mielnir as a weapon, as an indication of worthiness. I do, I am legally obliged to mention the art of Katsugi, which is the idea of finding beauty and broken pieces and bringing them, you know, like the art itself usually centers on, I think, broken pottery and using sort of gold to put the pieces back together. And the goal is not to make it look like it did before, but to make it look like something new and beautiful and beautiful because of its brokenness and reforgedness. And that's, of course, what we think about. We think about Milneur in Love and Thunder.

Anything you want to say about the shattered aspect of Milnear? I think just like that with Jane and Mielnir in general, we're able to think about different aspects of the magic of Mielnir than we do with Thor, in part because their experiences are so different. So, you know, Thor grows up as the son of Odin. on Asgard, surrounded by magic. And for Jane, a scientist from Earth who likes to talk about Arthur C. Clark and the path from science to magic to go back to Jason Aaron in the comics and the mighty Thoran when Jane has the hammer, it's so cool to see her learning about it. So like there's a passage that I love, I just flew through space. That was amazing. But how did you, thou knew, right where to bring me?

The hammer knew. Is this thing alive? And then she talks to it and says, Meal near, canst thou hear me? And that's not a moment that you would get from Thor because his history with the hammer is so completely different. And so seeing the different characters interact with the same object, really helps us learn more.

There's also this concept we're going to bring up later, which is the cost of the weapon, and the idea that every time Jane uses the weapon in Love and Thunder, it is draining. Weapons, re-forge, remained. Of course, the first thing we're going to think about is Lord of the fucking Rings. Of your own of it, Lord.

Narsal, the sword that was broken. Becoming Enduro Flame of the West. I was, okay, so we're going to get to Brandon Sanderson a little later, thanks to some listener emails, because Mallory and I are, like, uninformed in the world of Brandon Sanderson. But, like, we understand that he is very important in this conversation. But last night, I was watching a Brandon Sanderson TikTok that he's very active on TikTok, and I was watching, he's giving like these little mini lectures on TikTok. It's really fun.

And the one that I watched last night was he was talking about some of the key differences between the Peter Jackson film. and the books and the ones that he really likes. And the question of Aragon as an I don't want it sort of leader is Peter Jackson and mentioned what Brandon Sanderson was saying is he was like, it's more dynamic for the film. We meet Aragorn earlier on his arc than we meet him in the book, right? In the book, he arrives fully formed. He knows he wants to be king.

He's carrying the shards of Narsal with him. They reforge that blade for him at Rivendell before he sets out on his. his adventure in the first place. I'm not saying that Jackson is better than Tolkien as a storyteller, but from a sort of like cinematic perspective, it is a little bit more interesting for us to see Aragorn make this active choice. And for the sequence in Rivendale, Rivendale is not how you pronounce that, Rivendell between Aragorn and Bormeer when they're talking about the Shards of Narsil, right?

And we've talked about this scene before we were talking about rings of power, but this idea that Aragorn is regarding the Shards of Narsil, those fragments as evidence of the frailty of men of the flaws he inherited from his Sealedor. And then Arwen gives him the old, you know, essentially, it's not what makes you weak. And anything I want to say about that initial Shars of Narsil and Rivendell sequence. You know I love a reluctant leader. I know you do. So this is just right there in the sweet spot.

Love this, love this so much. Kind of can't believe that we got this far in the pod without talking about it. But there's so much to cover, so much that we love. This is a special one for us. One of the things that I love about that moment and the look on Aragorn's face as he is considering this and the doubt and the fear,

like the fear of who you are. because we talk a lot about these magical weapons, helping you channel who you are, heightening something about the ability that you already have, keys, conduits. Well, what if the portal that it opens leads you to a place you don't want to go? And for the character to grapple with that

is just fascinating and riveting. But like, if we think about the role of Narsil and the story, we get that both sides of the blade once again from the lovely Ryan Johnson tweet and ensuing passage that you shared earlier. That's also the blade that cut the one ring from Sauron's finger. There's a version of the character in a given moment that says this speaks to what we are capable of.

This speaks to the recurring cycle of the challenge, but our ability to find a way to persevere in the face of unflinching, unceasing, darkness, and despair. But what's the other side of it? It's, well, where did Oseldor go? And what did he do?

And what choices did he make after he cut the watering? Right. And those were both there. The reason that the fight goes ever on, like, the road is because of a Seilder's choice. But this is a classic picking up, he's a Seilder's heir. A Seilder isn't his literal father, but it's down the line, right? And it's picking up your father's weapon to fight the battle that your father's

Like, technically you won, but then lost because the reason that Sauron's back is because Isilder could not take that final step. I think perhaps our guy, Hugo Weaving, might say it best, so Steve, will you play this clip from Return of the King? They will answer to the King of Gondor. The shards of Narsil. Be more deadly than any that walks this earth. Put aside the ranger.

Become who you are. fucking great. I said Hugo Weaving, but really the person who's really crushing in that is Howard Shore. The score in that sequence is incredible. And I love that the film just takes a beat. There's so much of that clip. Oftentimes when I put together some of these clips, I will clip out a long section of score so that we just hear the dialogue because people are like, come on, come on, get it.

But I was like, I couldn't touch a hair on its head because the score is so incredible there. And it's like, and the sound of the sword being unsheathed and held loft and it's so, I mean, not sound Freudian, it's so fucking big. It's just like, it's just this incredible, incredible cinematic moment. It's just fantastic. And then, of course, being told to put aside the Ranger. become who you're born to be. Right? And the way in which Jackson decides to tie that to the sort is incredible.

It gives Erdogan this authority, much like Escalibur gives Arthur authority. Of course, Aeroom is already the king, already a natural board leader, all this sort of stuff like that without the fancy hardware, but it is a sign of legitimacy for him. And when we build toward, you know, we've spent so much time inside of that. doubt with him and living in that fear and we build toward his rousing speech for Frodo, you know, at the gates of Mordor, one of the things that I love that scene and that speech, as you know, and one of the reasons that I love it most of all, it's not just because the sword is in his hand and his hair is changing. There's this more regal air and he has put aside the ranger and become who he was born to be. It's that once he has, there is still there that seed of doubt

and that question of what happens if you err. Like when he says the day may come when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. It's not like he believes that they've wandered into some utopia, right? The courage of men may fail, but it won't be that day with that group of people and that's just an incredible thing. This day we fight. We should say that in the book, Narsil, Ornduriel is tied much more to like these idea of dreams and prophecies. A Bormir goes to Ravinell in the first place because of Faramir's prophetic dream telling

him to seek for the sword that was broken. And of course, there's this, someone makes it into the film, but there's Bill those verse of the riddle of strider, right, where he says, ready? All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost. The old that is strong does not wither. Deep roots are not reached by the frost from the ashes. Fire shall be woken.

A light from the shadow shall spring. Renewed shall be the blade that was broken. The crownless again shall be king. The best. Oathkeeper, we already talked about oaths, and swerns and keps on swords are very important. And that brings us to, remember when Brian Coggin was on talking to us about rings of power? And he was like underlining the way in which Peter Jackson's a horror director and how that comes through.

So we're going to go to Ergonne and the King of the Undead in this clip here. And I just want to let you know, Mallory, out of deference to you. I cut out like a lot of nightmare laughing from the King of the Undead, which is like very scary just to listen to. But Steve, will you play what romance? I summon you to fulfill your oath. None but the king of Gondor may come home. He was broken. It has been remade.

Fight for us and regain your honor. I amici d'Auze. Fight for me. And I will hold your oath fulfilled. The fact that the sword is, I mean, it has been remade. I might as well say, it's been remade, bitch. Like, the fact of that, and I mean, I think that's a moment that the people who didn't like Lord of the Rings when it came out might identify as two action heroie. But like the sword being so central to that moment of like an old oath that was sworn and also restore your honor.

Follow me into battle. I can this sword made, the value made to me and this sword. can restore your honor. That's how powerful it is. And again, Aragon and the King of the Dead have that very John and White Walker moment of like my ghost blade. Your sword can stop my ghost blade? What the shit?

Sort of moment. So it's pretty great. This is not the only magical sword and Lord of the Rings, of course. What else do you want to talk about, Mallory? Yeah, we should just for a quick second here, mention another favorite of our sting, of course. And, you know, the elven,

I think there are a couple different cool things about staying that are worth mentioning in the context of today's pod. One, you know, this idea of like the elven forged blade. Obviously, there is like the magic of the elves inside of the blade. But also you think about something that's like a dagger in the hand of an elf and a sword for a hobbit, whether it's Bilbo or later Frodo. And one of the things that like I loved most talking about with you during the Rings Power Pods was like all of the different groups inside of Middle Earth who can't

can't find that song, that harmony with each other, even though that's the only way forward. And so something like the elven blade in the hand of a hobbit represents that kind of possibility. It's a blade across time, you know, this first stage forging that makes its way into like later tales and later hands. Small hands do it because they must, Joe, and they're the ones holding sting in our our stories. And then, of course, just like the blue light, it's that idea of the shield. again, the fact that, yes, this is a stick-em-with-the-pointy-end object technically, but its real value comes from the warning, the herald of danger that awaits and that draws ever nearer. So it is, in essence, a shield. It's a way of protecting yourself and the people

in your fellowship. And so I love that part of it. I love it too. Also, you promised me, you promised all of us a master class on purifying chyber crystals. You want to talk about a your girl isoka some more? Star Wars? I do love a Khyber crystal, as you know, so I can, yeah, I'll do like just a, I'll try to, I'll try to keep it quick. But, you know, the Asoka lightsaber journey

and the white blades, like, part of the reason that the dark saber is so adored is because of how distinct and singular it is, right? Tarvisla's blade, this object, as we talk often about, rejecting the way and forging a new way and how a character like Grogu is a Jedi and a Mandalorian. Well, Tarvisla, a Mandalorian

who was a Jedi and forged this blade, like the way that it can represent different, the melding of different cultures and customs, the number of non-force sensitives who have wielded it over time. Now, there are other characters in Star Wars who aren't force-sensitive who use lightsabers, like Grievous, say.

But the nature of the nature of, the bond that the Dark Sabre can forge even with a character who is not a force user is one of the things that we really love and is really great about it. We talked about this like a ton in Aramando Season 3 Primer Pod, but the way that it is that symbol of the right to rule tied to prophecy, the legend, the power of the story and the way people talk about it, which then can lead to that rejection, the blade with a mind, the sentience, inside of the crystal. We talked a lot about the Canaan Sabine training sequence in rebels, your thoughts, your actions, they become energy, they flew through the crystal as well and become

part of the blade is something Canaan says. That and Asoka's white blades are I think kind of of a piece in how really singular lightsabers connect to this larger lightsaber tradition, but also tell us something specific about the character who is holding it in that moment. And, you know, now subsequently on screen in Tales of the Jedi, gotten to see the confrontation between Asoka and the Sixth Brother, gotten to learn more about this stretch of Asoka's post-Jedi Order existence. That's like, a lot of that is explored in that aforementioned

2016 E.K. Johnston, Asoka novel. And you think about like Asoka's blades, she's got the green blade, the like lime green, shorter second Shoto blade in the Final Clone War season, season seven, when she returns, and Anakin gives them back to her. They're blue. When Asoka fires up the blades

and they're something we have never seen before in Star Wars and have not seen anywhere else since, they are just the perfect embodiment of who the character is, a character who is chosen to walk her own path. And I'd love that choice so much of the symbolism of the color there. Like she has not given up fully what it meant to be a Jedi, but she's not going to be bound

by the rules of the Jedi order, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. There's this passage in the novel after she has forged them. When Asoka opened her hands, she was not surprised to find the two lightsavers rough and unfinished were waiting. They would need more work, but they were hers. When she turned them on, they shone the brightest white. Now how did she come to forge them? She heard that song, Joe. The crystals, when we see a Sith blade that bright crackling red, what has happened is that a dark side user has bled the khyber crystal, has poured darkness and violence and pain and horror into the blade. Asoka didn't just find a new khyber crystal out there in the world after having lost her original blades. She heard the call of crystals that the sixth brother, one of the inquisitors, had bled, had corrupted.

And she purified them. She healed them. She reforged not only lightsabers for herself, but reforged the crystals to connect to the good, to connect to the light. Here's a passage. Kneeling beside her fallen foe, Asoka sifted through the wreckage of his lightsaber hilt. The crystals that had powered his lightsaber were no longer contained by metal. but their song had not dimmed. She held them in one hand, almost shaking as the familiarity of them coursed through her.

The warmth in the fingertips again, they have called out to her, they have chosen her, but she has also chosen them. And it doesn't work if it's only one choosing the other. It has to be a mutual thing. The color choice is so interesting. I mean, like, I think it's a mistake to sort of get too tied up in color theories with lightsabers because it comes and it goes. But that idea of Asoka is someone outside the binary.

And so outside the blue-green, purple, if you will, et cetera, et cetera, of the light side and outside the red of the dark. And is the bright white instead. Another Dark Saber sidebar we want to say really quickly is just a lot of people are wondering, the dark saber gets crumpled at the end of Mando season three. There is some beauty in that in terms of this idea of like you don't need this trinket to lead, right? the Mandalorians are the weapon, not the Dark Sabre, et cetera, et cetera. But is there a possibility that Gros, that the crystal, the Khyber in the center of the Dark Saber, that Gros might forge a new weapon, perhaps a smaller weapon for, you know,

and either purify the crystal or change the crystal in some way or whatever, but make a new weapon from that crystal. And is there something beautiful and symbolic in that? I'm of two minds about that. Like, yes, it's possible and yes, it's kind of cool. But also, I just kind of like the fact that the Dark Sabre was like ended. I like that too. And I kind of wish it would stay ended.

But this idea of making something new and different, which we've talked about a bunch out of it, is interesting to me too. So, you know, I'm very Mallory, very torn about this. How do you feel about it? Yeah, I'm also up to minds. You know, I love the Dark Saber, but I think that the. the character's not letting it hold that power over them is important. I also think that it does really connect nicely to Grogu as a character who walks both worlds to use the armorer's language. And that in a way, like they're giving the object the kind of power they don't want to give it if they say it can't exist or it misleads and waylaes them, you know, to rebuild it as a tool for good and as something that they can connect with.

and use and bond with and for Grogu maybe to find that harmony with the blade, I think would be really cool. So I won't feel like this is like a, oh boy, another like Star Wars walk back. Everything has to come back into the story and we're never really done with anything. I don't think I'll feel that way about it if it comes back, but I think it will have to be done. Depends how it's done. Yeah, in that kind of way. All right, we want to talk about the idea of misunderstanding the blade. This is something that Mal you like to bring up a lot

when you're talking about what happens with the Elder One and Harry Potter. Take me through your Elder One thoughts and feelings. Yeah. The Elder Wand is one of the Hallows, and there's a lot of descriptions across Deathly Hallows of this bloody trail that it traces across history,

the way that the legend spreads. It has these different names across history. The way that these power, hungry wizards like coveted and kill for it and how it leads people astray. And the way that it connects to wand lore and the idea of the connection between the wand and the wizard, like we talked about earlier, and understanding proves so crucial to the final showdown against spoilers, to the final showdown between Harry and Voldemort because Harry has learned something, has bothered to learn something, has sought to learn something

that Voldemort has fundamentally misunderstood. Voldemort thinks, I will kill and I will take and then I will gain. And Harry truly studies and takes the time to parse and assess not only what happened and how it ties the characters, but why? Here's a passage from Deathly Hellas. You still don't get it, Riddle, do you?

Possessing the wand isn't enough. Holding it, using it doesn't make it really yours. Didn't you listen to Olavander? The wand chooses the wizard. The elder wand recognized a new master before Dumbledore died, someone who never even laid a hand on it. The new master removed the wand from Dumbledore against his will, never realizing exactly what he had done,

or that the world's most dangerous wand had given him its allegiance. And then there's a passage. in the same stretch. So it all comes down to this, doesn't it? whispered Harry. Does the wand in your hand know its last master was disarmed?

And it does, but Voldemort never did. And never would have taken the time to try to figure out why. And that's one of the many, but ultimately one of the fundamental distinctions between them at the end. What about the rejection of the blade?

We're going to put that under this category of misunderstanding the blade. But it's not a misunderstanding, but I think it's a key idea. What does it mean to reject the weapon? Yeah. Harry decides ultimately not to keep it. There's a passage,

there's a stretch earlier in Deathly Hallows where, as they're learning about the Hallows, exploring the Tale of Three Brothers, each of Harry, Ron, and Hermione says at the same time which hallow they would choose and they all pick a different one. And Ron is Ron is the one who's

coveting the unbeatable wand. Of course. And Harry, that does not, not only does not appeal to Harry, he sees the peril there. And in the book, he chooses to put it in Dumbledore's tomb.

In the movie, he literally snaps it in half. But he decides I was happier with mine. That's what he says. And he uses the unbeatable wand to fix his own wand, the one that had chosen him,

instead of keeping it. And then buries it, puts it away and says, the previous master will never have been defeated. That'll be the end of it. So there's power in that rejection. There's confidence.

There's certainty. There's hope. You put this in our notes and it gave me another excuse. to talk about Buffy, so I'm going to take it, which is in the final season of Buffy Vampire Slayer, something I love about the weapons that Buffy uses on the show is

yeah, she has trunks full of like crossbows and holy water and like whatever sometimes, but the majority of the time, Buffy is killing vampires from like objects she's found, a broken table leg, a broken fence post, like whatever, like something wood that has

shattered in the course of the fight and she picks up since she uses to defend herself. And there's something I think really be, like how non-magical and extremely ordinary and in fact just found a shrapnel in the fight, that is usually the weapon that Buffy uses. There's a sort of important like blah, blah, blah. But in the final season, there is this scythe, which is one of the ugliest magical weapons you've ever seen on anything. It looks great in the pages of the comic, and it looks really terrible on the show. It is bright, fire engine red, and it's got a side axe head on one side, and then a stake on the other side.

and it is deeply ugly. And it is very Excalibur-like. I mean, they make a ton of Excalibur references to it because it is found in a stone. Our bad guy is trying to chip away the stone to get to it. Buffy pulls it out like his butter, of course, like blah, blah, right? She has this weapon. Spoilers for the end of Buffy.

She has this weapon. Seems like a weapon of war, right? What she uses it for, and I mean, they use it to fight. Yes, they do. But what they really use it to do is to take the power of the chosen, one, the one slayer, and give it to all the other girls who are potential slayers. And they use the scythe to do that. So it's not using it to hack and stab.

It's using it to share the power of the chosen one with all the other potential slayers. And that is how they win. And it is her ability to reject in a way this magical weapon as like, oh, I got the big shiny axe thing. and understand how to use it correctly in order to stop the final threat that I love. All right. Wheel of Time. Mallory and I have mentioned this is a hole in our knowledge. But we got a great email from Alex about it, so I just wanted to mention it really quickly.

It's just so it's represented here. Alex writes, obviously, there are many magical blades in the series of Wheel Time from the heron-marked blade of the sword. sword masters earned by defeating a sword master in single combat, but passed down to Rand by his father, to the Ashandari pole arm wielded by Matt, both as a powerful tool in combat and as a subtle knife moving him between worlds. I hope you get a chance to talk about Calendor, the sword that is not a sword. I just find it such a fascinating weapon that works both as a herald of prophecy, with Rand pulling it like Excalibur from the Stone of Tear, and as a deeply flawed weapon that Rand is continuously afraid to engage with,

something about having to give up control to a circle in order to fully reach its potential and as an inbuilt flaw, the wild destruction it reeks when Rand tries to use it to fight, ultimately worrying him about his own ability to repair things rather than just break the world again, trying to use it without fully understanding the flaw,

being Morden's ultimate downfall, and the way in which Rand is ultimately able to succeed also seems both deeply connected to fantasy tropes while providing this unique bonding element that makes it truly engaging in my mind. So Mallory and I both read this and we were like, shit, we have to move wheel of time back up our list of two read books.

This is very cool, but it has so many elements that like an antagonist misunderstanding it, a blade you can't fully control the cost of the blade, etc., etc., all that's our stuff. On the mind of the blade, we talked about this a bunch. this idea of like a blade, making a choice, choosing the wielder, like all the sort of stuff. But, and as a friend, I want to bring up, we got a bunch of emails about this one sword, Gantoran, which is the titular weapon.

And Robin McKinley's the Blue Sword. I love the Blue Sword. I love even more of The Hero in the Crown, which is a follow-up book that also that sword appears in. But shout out to Roseanne and Lauren, a bunch of other people for writing about the Blue Sword. I just want to quickly read this passage from The Hero in the Crown. crown. And what I think it underlines for me is the way the sword with the mind of its own, the sword is your best ally in a fight, right? So Aaron is our hero. She's having a fight with someone

who's, it's very lightsaber like the blue sword has a blue glow. Our bad guy has a red sword, blah, blah. Anyway, so Aaron raised Gunteran again and shook her the blade. And blue fire ran down her edge and over Aaron's hand and wrist and onto the floor and where it touched, cracks appeared and ran in tiny rays in all directions. The Red Sword whipped out of its scabbard and flew at her, but Gunturin flashed to stop it. And where the blades crashed together, more blue fire dripped and splashed. And there was another series of small star-shaped cracks in the floor. The Red Sword bit at her again and again, Gunturin pulled her arm into place in time to deflect it.

Yet even as death awaited her so near, she could see its red jaws opening. Her clearest thought was still a desperate desire to find a way to make her chest up itching. I wonder if one can still itch if one is dead, she thought, and her arm jerked once more as Gunthern parried another slash. Who taught you sword play, Thunder, I said. No mortal confessed me. And while the red sword looked like seven swords as it swooped down on her again, and yet Gunn turned with seven swords in return and struck them all away, She laughed and the red blade wavered when she laughed. And as the red blade hesitated, Gunturin struck as his shoulder and an human scream went up from the red mage or from the blue sword, Aaron couldn't tell.

So like all these moments, this is joining in all these passage where like the sword is pulling her arm or the sword is parrying or the sword is screaming. Like I just love that personification of the sword. and it's active involvement. You know, Aaron's distracted thinking about whether or not her chest inches of the sword. It's like, oh, we're in the middle of a fight, though. So shall we pair in thrust, perhaps? I love that shit. We got a lot of Brando-Sando emails.

I got to tell you Brandon Sanderson is a guy. He's a real prolific writer. And in the car. Cosmere universe. There's a couple things that we got emails about. DeZora wrote in about this sword called the nightblood. Where do you rank nightblood on the scale of one to ten of a sword names? It's foreboding, but I love it.

The sword's self-stained purpose is to destroy evil, and to do this, it draws people it classifies as evil to pick it up, and then ramps up their bloodthirsts to 100 and forces them to appeal themselves with the blade. How do you feel about, this is a very like Dexter killing serial killers sort of situation? This is intense. I like to, you know, it's good to talk about some of the ill-intentioned blades, certainly. Yes. We'll get to that a little bit more soon, but not every blade is there to help and heal. Nightblood. And then Michael and Seth wrote in about the shard blades, which are another, like, really cool invention of Brandon Sanderson that, like, sort of vanish from the,

then come back. Again, since we have not read these books, we don't have like a personal connection to this, but we think it all sounds very cool. Very, very cool. And then another listener, Seth, wrote in about Stephen Universe, a show that I have watched and absolutely love, a very, very emotionally important show.

But I love what Seth wrote about the ways in which the weaponry and Stephen Universe tend to symbolize personality, quote, graceful Pearl wields a dancing speech. year. Chaotic amethyst wheels a whip. Stallworth, uh, I think it's garnet.

Stalworth garnet wheels full fist gontlets and rose quartz's sword is no exception. The sword is, you know, anyway, Stephen has a shield. We talked about cap on his shield. All this sort of stuff is really cool and important and thoughtful. You know what I mean,

the way in which. And how fun to like sit and build a world and think about what unique weapon best suits the kind of story you want to, tell about a character. Oh, yeah. I mean, the weapons, the blades that feel like they are so utterly of that place and connected to those words, like, it makes me think a little bit very different particulars, but just that idea of the creation and the connection to the place of a thing we actually haven't

talked about, say, which is Dune, you know, and the role of the Chris Knife, like the maker, these local beliefs and the weight of prophecy. the shrieks of a character like MAPs talking to Jessica and the way that they talk about. Once you have seen this, once you know this, this thing that is ours, this tooth of shy Hulud, it will have a bearing on who you are for the rest of your days. We're recording this podcast literally hours after. the Dune 2 trailer dropped and like you just saying shy Hulud like put like chills down my my aracas. I'm so excited for Dune. I can't wait. Do you want to talk about the necrosword

in the MCU? I'll just very quickly say this is of course the all black all black the necrosword. We saw it in love and thunder. It's present across the comics. But the reason we wanted to mention it in the mind of the blade section is because of of the role of the symbiote, like the idea of the symbiote manifesting as a weapon, not only the consciousness, the sentience,

the bloodlust, but this connection to this larger symbiotic hive mind, very sinister stiff. There are a couple really dark and grim MCU or Marvel magical blades the ebony blade, which falls more into our next category of the curse of the blade.

Yeah. You know, a blade that we saw very briefly at the end of Maternals. Will we see it again? Who can say? Oh, Kit. But Dane Whitman's blade, there's another connection here to meteors and swords for meteors. Another connection here to Merlin. so a lot of familiar touchstones here after today's chat.

But the curse of that blade specifically tying to the way that it preys on the bloodlust and darkness inside of its wielder? Very grim. Very cool. The curse and the cost of the blade is the last thing we want to talk about. I'm going to zoom back to Thrones for a second before we're going to get to a beloved shared property. we haven't talked about really yet that Mallory and I want to talk about. On the Thrones beat, the cost of the weapon, I want to use as an excuse to talk about my guy, Barak Dandarian and his flaming sword.

Barak Dundarian, if you don't know, is a character who has died many times and been brought back to life by Thoris of Mir, and the concept of fire magic, fire whites. This is something that George has really said in, like, interviews, not unless it's in one of Sam Scrolls and I missed it, but I think this is really a George interview moment. George says, poor Barrett Dundarian, who is set up as the foreshadowing of all of this, every time he's a little less Barrick, every time he comes back. His memories are fading. He's got all these scars. He's becoming more physically hideous because he's not a living human being anymore. His heart isn't beating.

His blood isn't flowing in his vein. He's a white, but a white animated by fire instead of by ice. So firewhite Barrick Dundarian uses his blood to set his sword aflame. The show plays very fast and loose with that later on, but this is the original lore. And one of my favorite passages from the book is Barrick talking about the cost of this existence. He says, can I dwell on what I scarce remember? I held a castle in the marches once, and there was a woman I was pledged to marry, but I could not find that castle today,

nor tell you the color of that woman's hair. Who knighted me, old friend? What were my favorite foods? It all fades. Sometimes I think I was born in the bloody grass in that grove of ash with a taste of fire in my mouth and a hole in my chest.

Are you my mother, Thoros? I love you, Baird-Dontarian. I love this concept. It's one of my favorite things that George ever did. It echoes out to Lady Stonehart, course and et cetera, et cetera. Let's talk now, at a long last, about his dark materials. And there are three bucks in the original trilogy, three items.

Golden Compass being number one, the amber spyglass being number three. But number two, the Empire Strikes Back of this trilogy is called The Settle Knife. It is one of Mallory's favorite books. I love that. What do you want to say about Settle Knife? I love the Sottle Knife. It's one of my favorite magical blades. I love The Sutter knife.

It's one of my favorite books. I love Will the bearer. He's one of my favorite characters. The idea of the bearer exists in the story independent of Will becoming the bearer in a way that I find so fascinating. Like there's this expectation, this anticipation around the role of the bearer. And then Will becomes that. and a character making choices and exerting free will inside of this like prophetic sense of destiny and expectation and the burden of that.

There is a lot, a lot of our different buckets today connect to the subtle blade, the cost. Yeah, the pair will quite literally lose fingers to win the blade, the link not only between will and the blade will highlight some lovely lines from the text in a minute. But between Will and Lyra, Lyra as the reader of the eletheometer, Will as the bearer of the subtle knife, eventually Mary as the forger of the amber spyglass. The loneliness that you might feel in a vacuum of your singular experience with that object is present for them, but then it melts away because they're experiencing this. together. They're sharing that burden together. The blade itself, it's just incredible. Like, there's the power of it. Yes, it can cut through anything. But it is a portal between worlds. It can cut openings and windows into other worlds. And the way that you do it or the way that you work it is that you put your mind at the tip of the blade.

and if it senses your hesitation, your doubt, your fear, as it does when Will thinks about his mother, it will shatter. It will shatter in your hand. We'll talk in a few minutes about where Will and the subtle blade end up. But in terms of the moment of discovery, the moment where the blade chooses him, and he, much like John Snow, doesn't, want it. There's... I don't want it. Pages upon pages.

And we'll just kind of like select a few of the germian lines. But we'd recommend that you read this all in full because it's wonderful. Philip Pullman. His dark material. The whole thing. Legend. Here you are. Take the knife. It is yours. I don't want it, said Johnstone. No, said Will. I don't want anything to do with it.

You haven't got the choice, said the old man. you are the bearer now. The knife knows when to leave one hand and settle in another, and I know how to tell. You don't believe me? Look, he held up his own left hand. The little finger and the finger next to it

were missing, just like Will's. I fought and lost the same fingers, the badge of the bearer. That idea, again, of like sacrifice of giving up a piece of yourself, surrendering something not only about your quest, your purpose, a fundamental altering of the choices

you will make moving forward, but literally a piece of who you are. And this bear, former bear, Jack Moe, like knowing when it's time to give up the blade and pass it on to a new bearer. And the blade knowing when it's time to move to another bearer, that shared recognition of that moment. The physical nature of the blade, incredible. The other edge, the old man went on, is more subtle still. With it, you can cut an opening out of this one.

world all together. And then later, he's guiding will toward how to forge that connection. Put your mind out at the very tip of the knife. Concentrate, boy, focus your mind. Don't think about your wound. It will heal. Think about the knife tip. That is where you are. I love that. Like that idea that you, not only your consciousness, not only your heart, your soul, but your, your very essence is right there at the tip of the blade that you, as much as the thing in your hand, are the one cutting that window into another world. Like, I struggle to think of a more magical idea than that, but also what a terrible burden.

What a responsibility to shoulder. Yeah. And that's part of why they have to, they have to break it at the end. Spoilers for Amber Spyglass. There's an earlier accidental breaking and a repair. Blade Reforged. Stop us if you've heard that before.

But there is a sacrifice. There is a surrender. And it's not, it's a rejection in a fashion, but it's not because at that point we're in a full, I don't want it to territory. It's because Will and Lyra have to accept a life apart in order for everybody else to be able to be together, for everybody else

to be able to move forward. That's the, forget the fingers. That's the real cost. This is the real cost, exactly. Like the pain, not just the pain in your hand, but the pain in your heart and the thing that will linger there, the fingers healed. This is there forever.

Every year when Will and Lyra go and sit on their bench in their own world in the Botanical Gardens in Oxford makes me fucking sob every time, that pain and that longing will be there forever. It's a defining thing in their lives. It is so hard for Will to break it. Here's a passage from Amber Spyglass. Now, he said, trying to sound matter of fact, but having to turn away from Ariel the same,

I've got to break the knife. He searched the air in the familiar way until he found a gap and tried to bring to mind just what had happened before. He had been about to cut away out of the cave and Mrs. Coulter had suddenly and unaccountably reminded him of his mother

and the knife had broken because he thought it had at last met something it couldn't cut and that was his love for her. So he tried it now. Summoning an image of his mother's face as he'd last seen her fearful

and distracted in Mrs. Cooper's little hallway. But it didn't work. The knife cut easily through the air and opened into a world where they were having a rainstorm. Heavy drops hurtled through, startling them both. He closed it again quickly and stood puzzled for a moment. His demon knew what he should do and said simply Lyra. Of course, he nodded. And with a knife in his right hand, he pressed with his left. The spot where her tears still lay on his cheek. And this time with a wrenching crack, the knife shattered. And the blade fell in pieces to the ground to glitter on the stones that were still wet with the rain of another universe.

Ugh. Gorgeous. Devastating. So sad. Something that Phil Pullman does with his names, of course, is like, The names have like a descriptive quality of the character, right? So Lyra is a liar. It's like a whole thing with her, right?

I love that it's Will Perry, right? Like not Will stab or Will. Good, Bad Baby, Will thrust or anything like that, right? It's like Will Perry will deflect. His name is the name of the action of a wielder of a blade. And I just love that. I love these books. Oh, so good.

It's like sometimes the burden of the bearer isn't to pick the thing up. It's to put it down. Put it down. Put it down, break it. Give it up. All right. I think it's fine that we should cleanse these tears with some cursed blades. In Norse mythology, there is the blade tearfing, which is just an iconic er-cursed blade.

cursed by the dwarves that were forced to make it, et cetera, et cetera. And it inspired some modern creations. And we want to shout out this one that a lot of people wrote in about and a lot of people have references very important. And it is an IP that Mallory and I have no knowledge of. So we are just vulnerable at opening ourselves up to this. It's called Stormbringer, created by Michael Moore Cog,

the curse blade of Elric of Melibon. Did I pronounce that correctly? Who knows? Neil Gaiman cites Michael Moorcock's this Elric story as a foundational text. For his storytelling, it's like a 1970s

considered an iconic high fantasy story. And I am going to... Okay, so the powerful and chanted Black Blade Stormbringer is a of a demon race that takes on the form of a sword and is such as an agent of chaos.

Stormbringer's edge is capable of cutting through virtually any material not protected by potent sorcery and it can drink the soul from and thereby kill any unprotected living creature upon delivering any wound, even a scratch. Nice. Its most distinctive features are that it has a mind and will of its own and that it feeds upon the souls of those it kills. Elric, the wielder, loaves the sword, but is almost helpless. Without the strength and vitality, it confers on him.

Stormbringer's hunger for souls is such that it frequently betrays Elric by creating a bloodless in his mind, turning in his hands and killing friends and lovers. The cursed nature of the sword adds to Elric's guilt and self-loathing, even as he feels pleasure when the stolen life force enters his body. Sounds like some light summer reading. I'm in. That sounds great. Our listeners, Brett and Dan wrote about this.

Brett wrote, I love this sword because it's pretty much the opposite of most other magic swords like Enduriel staying in the common D&D magic sword, which are special weapons that allow their wielder to be even more heroic in their quest for justice, love, the general, quote unquote, good. E.G. Enduriel, being an artifact proving Eragorn's king's ship or sting warning its users of bodies being nearby. Stormbringer, on the other hand, is an evil, actually evil sword, which parasitically gives its wielder Elric's strength so the sword can feed on souls, cause chaos and despair by killing

allies and ultimately ensure that its evil lives on even when the world is ending. And something I didn't pull this from one of the emails, but something that one of either Brider or Dan wrote in, was the idea of Elric, this character being a response to the Conan sword and sorcery where Conan is like hugely muscle bound, right? And it's again, is that might versus right. Elric is slight, slender, small, and the sword gives him the power he needs because he is trying, he is trying to do good in the world. Right. And he needs the sword in order to do that because he is not physically capable of that on his own. but the cost, the ongoing, never-ending cost of this sword that he takes up to try to defend the world. Fascinating to me. Again, I haven't read it, but...

I'm going to read this. Mallory and I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about this. We're pretty excited for Stormbringer. Nightblood, Stormbringer, heart eater. Incredible journey through magical events with you, Mallory Rubin. Oh, my God. This is one of the thrills of my life. Seriously.

This was just like... genuinely an honor and a privilege. So wonderful. Was this a long podcast? Yes. Could we have gone longer? Absolutely. Without question.

Were we real time cutting things out of the yellow? We were. So you know what? Here we are. Okay. Thank you for listening to us for this long talk about magical weapons. Thank you for going on all these journeys through all these stories that we love with us. We love you for listening.

So thank you so much. Can we for the next tropes course, Joe? I know. It's so fun to look for these hooks in whatever we're covering. in the present day and use it as a little portal of our own back into the past. A little subtle knife to cut through our various story world. Yeah, we don't have one currently planned, but we will before long. Hobbes and Dragons at gmail.com.

People sent us ideas. They're great. Thank you so much. Thanks to our magical weapons, Arjuna Raqqqa Paul. First production work. Joe Me a Dinneron, first work on the social. And like, you know, the, that's, sealer against the darkness,

the weapon to end all weapons, Steve Allman, our beloved. All right, that does it for us today. Program reminders, of course, I'm going to leave you with. Please do check out Mint Edition, the Minty Fresh Boys, Jomi and Steve, covering visions on this feed.

Also, the Midnight Boys, Poo-Pew will be here on Friday to cover the Garden of the Galaxy. Then, of course, Mallory and I will return on Monday to do our Guardians of Galaxy deep dive. Thank you so much. snicked... That's all I'm saying. Bye!